Good question - one I've pondered for over 40 years. My guess is that it's just too different and most people are unwilling to abandon hard-won knowledge they have about other programming languages to become a novice again.
On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 8:05 PM, Vijay Lulla <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > -- Devon McCormick, CFA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
