Raul :

Two specific things jump out at me:

1. The phrase "people scared of admitting their own ignorance" seems a bit
dismissive and I would suspect rather off-putting to any outsiders who came
to the page hoping to find a reason to try J.

2. The phrase "people skilled in the language are in high demand,
especially in financial and engineering communities" is surprising to me.
As a newcomer, the impression I get is that there are approximately zero
open J-related jobs in the world, and a small demand for APL developers
from companies wanting to maintain (or replace) legacy systems.

I am not the only person who shares this perception. I know at least one J
developer who started learning APL recently specifically because it seemed
like that's where the work is. From what I can tell, most of the people who
hang out in the IRC channel seem to treat J as a fun hobby, either for code
golfing, project Euler, or just a change of pace from the norm.

If there really is a demand, maybe as a community we could find a better
way to let people know. I for one would love to do some J contract work. :)

As for the rest of the essay...

For what audience are you writing this? From the title I was sort of
expecting some reasons to use J, but it mostly seems to be a response to
various criticisms of APL.

I think the strongest pro-j idea in the piece is this part at the end:

"My experience has been that if I can't express a computing concept in J
then I do not really understand it. If I can express it in J then it's easy
to translate that knowledge into other languages (like javascript)."

I suppose if I were an English teacher, I might suggest making that your
thesis and expanding the idea... :)

-Michal

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 8:35 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've a new wiki essay up: http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/WhyJ
>
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