Ask PG: Do you still consider character count a good Prime Directive for an HLL?

I was just about to code an IF and used COND instead, even with the extra parens, and thought about Arc and the principle I recall Mr. Graham stating rather unequivocally (hope I get this right, but it made a strong impression at the time) that any syntax suggestion that made code shorter was A Good Thing.

My non-trivial exercise in Arc gave me syntax anxiety, because the shortening was usually achieved by syntax cleverness requiring a pause while I reminded myself of the shortcut's usage.

Now that I think on it, I recall Mr. Graham saying another big design principle was that the language be small enough to keep in one's head, and it seems to me that would argue against cleverness as well as specification index page cont.

I am just wondering if Mr. Graham has any follow-up thoughts on language design based on his Arc experience, and specifically on the "shorter is better" rule.