http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/courses/670Fall04/GreatWorksInPL.shtml
Before I stumbled upon J (sometime early or late 2011) I wasn't even aware of array languages. I'd tried a lot of different different languages (Haskell, Ocaml, HaXe, numpy/scipy, and R) out of my own interest but I never came across an array language (even though numpy is an array language borrowing heavily from APL/J...I wasn't ware of it)!! I used to read Phil Wadler, Benjamin Pierce, Simon Peyton Jones, Hal Daume III and thought that these guys were ahead of the curve....Until I learned about J (and eventually APL/J/K/Q). Now I think that APLers/Jers are ahead of everyone...even functional programmers!!! My question is: I'm very lucky to have stumbled upon J/APL but how is it not more widely known? APL/Jers have idioms for programming scenarios, and is second nature to them, which is unknown to most other programmers?!? Some examples, inverse (&.), key (/.), grade up/down(/: and \:), and insert (/). Am I missing something obvious? I'm not being rhetorical here but how would I have learned of array languages if I hadn't had mental machinery (makeup?) to set aside my biases/prejudices and give a new idea a decent chance (apparently this is hard in itself!!! who knew??)?? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
