Devon,
Not only short snippets like the ones you mention, but on projecteuler.net,
but also the distinctive display of information in such posts increased my
curiosity. I distinctly remember the first time I saw some boxed items, I
thought "Nice! this programmer must have some utility/program to generate
such output". But I kept on seeing this so often (in J submissions by
different authors) that I thought that it might be something that J
programmers just do. Regardless, it deserved further examination. And,
boy am I glad that I persisted. Box display is another aspect of J that I
absolutely love. I now use J to create boxed displays for use in my
documents (primarily txt or html) to demonstrate some concepts in other
languages. For e.g. I used { (>:i.3);>:i.3 to demonstrate 2-dimensional
indexing for use in R.
J (and R too) make interactive use so much fun. And this is the primary
reason I like these languages so much.
Thanks,
Vijay.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 8:36 AM, Devon McCormick <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Vijay -
>
> Thanks for the sharing your views. It's always good to hear from new
> enthusiasts. Those of us who have been doing this for a long time
> sometimes feel like we're shouting into the wind, so it's good to feel that
> the community's efforts are appreciated.
>
> I especially appreciate your acknowledgement that much of what we do in
> other languages and environments constitutes wasting our time on minutiae.
> I have to work in other languages because of work - though I do some J here
> as well - and feel very keenly the time wasted when I have to code up a
> five- or ten-character J solution in ten or twenty lines of code.
>
> I was recently perusing the J contributions on "dailyprogrammer" (e.g.
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/comments/2rfae0/20150105_challenge_196_practical_exercise_ready/
> )
> from "Godspiral" and, comparing the his few lines of J to others' pages of
> C++ or Java, I remain astonished that this disparity doesn't raise more
> curiosity about J.
>
> Regards,
>
> Devon
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Vijay Lulla <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> > I came across the below article by the way of Hacker News.
> > http://brookeallen.com/pages/archives/1234
> >
> > I'd like to share a couple of my views about J community. I came across
> J
> > sometime in 2012 by the way of projecteuler.net. As I learned a little
> bit
> > of the J language I realized that I was spending (wasting?) a lot of time
> > on minutiae in other languages/environments! I kept at it and now J is
> my
> > favorite language and I use it almost daily. There are a couple of
> things
> > very unique about J: the awesome community, and the amount of interesting
> > material that this community has generated.
> >
> > I'm also very impressed with the community's interest in always tying
> many
> > lessons/insights to its roots. This is unique, at least IMO to J
> (probably
> > to APL too but I couldn't say since I've not used it). And the more I
> read
> > about people like Ken Iverson, Ian Sharp, and Eugene McDonnell I'm even
> > more impressed. These guys could not help being geniuses...but they
> chose
> > to be excellent human beings (Ken Iverson's gesture of dingy bills
> > [mentioned in Beginnings in http://keiapl.org/rhui/remember.htm], Ian
> > Sharp's overall attitude [as listed in
> > http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/IPSA50.htm], and McDonnell's efforts to
> > make J accessible/fun)! I don't think I can find better role models (in
> > programming and real life) to emulate.
> >
> > I don't know why I felt compelled to share this with all of you. I
> guess,
> > just to tell you that all your work/efforts have impacted me, very
> > positively, and I appreciate it, as I'm sure many others do, very much.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Vijay.
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
