I see a few things here which represent positive goals (7, 8, 10). The rest seem to implicitly assume other work has been completed and proven good enough which, to my knowledge, no one has even started on.
That said, we probably should get in the habit of tagging our J related stuff with "jlang" and "jprogramming" for the benefit of search engines. ... We could also use a new meme to fill the role of the old "Death of the internet predicted. Film at 11." ... Anyways... What I'd be doing, instead, to address J community population issues, is write things which are of generic use for the sort of people that I think I'd want in the community. This would gradually pull in a few of them, and maybe some of them or some of their newer members might be inclined to improve things further. (We'd probably also get a some unhappy sorts, some impatient sorts, and so on... basically only a fraction of the adopters of the tool(s) would want to join the community. Everyone has their own priorities.) I'm not sure J's stable enough, yet, for that kind of work, though. For example, several of the projects I have in mind would depend on opengl bindings, at least one of them would use xml, an so on. (So, from my point of view, some of the efforts advocated here would actually detract from efforts that put us where I'd like to be.) That said, the changes being introduced in j807 are exciting (for example, it might be reasonable soon to write a native J xml parser instead of having to rely on sax like we used to - there's a lot of work there, as xml is a huge standard, but I could start by writing a parser which handles the xml subset I need and maybe let someone else take it from there). Thanks, -- Raul ... On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 9:40 PM, james faure <[email protected]> wrote: > Andrew Dabrowski is right. If J continues to steer it's current course, it > will be quickly forgotten. Roger Hui himself seems to have abandonned J > (correct me if I am mistaken), in favor of Dyalog APL. I can vouch from first > hand experience how incredibly difficult it is to interest my friends in J > and in fact have yet to get a single other person from Epitech > http://international.epitech.eu/ to learn J, even though I believe they are > convinced of it's power. > > Epitech International<http://international.epitech.eu/> > international.epitech.eu > Dear International Students, We will be happy to welcome you to Epitech and > hope you will enjoy this unique learning experience! Epitech has solidified > its reputation ... > > > > Since I seem to be by far the youngest person with a serious interest in J, I > will try to explain my understanding of the current situation, in the hope > that it may be useful to jsoftware. I also must say that between the time > that I heard of J and commited to learning it, I was extremely unsure about > whether the language would have a future and whether it would be suitable to > do everything. Ultimately, Henry Rich's success story is the reason I am > here, without it I would probably still be wondering to myself from time to > time about J, but without the conviction that it is suitable, or worth > learning. Project Euler also played a big part, and seems to be the main > place where people first hear about J nowadays. And even with those > conditions being met, If I learned J, it is only because I am both extremely > determined, and was able to complete school projects with plenty of spare > time. I have shown J to many people at Epitech, but I remain the only person > who uses it, most of those people never made it past the first few steps. The > learning curve has to be reduced, and it must be done so in the style of this > decade. As an aside, on proofreading this, some of my statements are harsh, > so please keep in mind they are not criticisms, more like a plea for help on > J's behalf. Also please do not think me arrogant because of my convictions. I > am well aware that I am not affiliated with nor in charge of jsoftware. > > My initial statement at the beginning of the long thread in the source forum > about generators expressed my surprise at J's lack of optimization for such a > simple case as '>:i.1000x'. I have mentionned multiple times that extended > precision calculations are simply far too slow, and this has even threatened > my desire to continue with J by throwing some serious doubts on it's ability > to satisfy my needs. But the greatest threat to J's existence is it's > complete failure to keep up with modern trends: > > > 0 The name 'J' is now exposed as being idiotic - it is very difficult to make > google understand what one means by 'J'. In fact I am forced to preface every > google search with 'site:jsoftware', which is no doubt sufficiently annoying > to put off many people. The language must be renamed. > > 1 The website looks decades old, and it is difficult to find things. Some > people I have shown J to abandonned the attempt after a bare minute of > visiting it. > > 2 Stack Overflow, and more generally Q&A resources are extremely popular > nowadays, most people are simply too lazy to read documentation and will > always try to formulate their question to google first. Should this prove > unsuccessful, they are often much less motivated to continue. J has almost no > presence on SO. > > 3 The Foreign's in J and the interface to this are frankly an abherration: > nobody wants to have to learn or look up all the time how to activate this > and that foreign, and there is no reason why they shouldn't all have much > more logical names. In the same vein: the o. family must be given logical > names like 'cos' 'sin' etc.. The concern of polluting the namespace is a > miniscule one. I also would urge everyone to stop using phrases like '2 o. > y', and '6!:2' etc.. but for that to happen, these need standard default > names, even multiple aliases. Noone cares nowadays about the miniscule > performance loss associated with having multiple equivalent names, the > possibility of guessingand have it work anyway is far more important. > > 4 The SC based system has has got to go.. A modern program should certainly > not depend on strict formulation rules in order to run optimally > > 5 Information needs to be presented differently, and in a way more in keeping > with modern trends for webdesign. NuVoc is magnificent, and I very much > appreciate the significant effort that has gone into explaining J, but the > website's overall presentation is not good. > > 6 People nowadays are too lazy to download the qtide and try the labs, (not > my learning style but for sure they are valuable) > > 7 Why isn't there an online Jconsole that can be used interactively, on > jsoftware's frontpage ?? The closest thing I could find is the 3rd party > https://tio.run/#j > > This comes back to the concept that If Newcomers are not sufficiently hooked > in within 5 seconds, you lose them forever. > > 8 There must be bulitin help in the jconsole. Even if it bloats the binary, > builtin help is obligatory for J. (something like help '/' should print some > example uses of insert and a brief summary) > > 9 Error messages are incomprehensible to newcomers (why does 'Rank error' not > also print the offending verb, it's rank, and the offending nouns + their > ranks ?) - experienced users are happy to use the debug interface, but this > shouldn't be necessary. > > 10 The Jsources are written in a magnificent style, but need many more > explanations (I understand the jdevs are aware of this). > > 11 Developping J-otherlang communication is a good idea, but given the > current situation it feels like an admission of defeat. > > > Maybe there is no solution for J. Perhaps the timing is wrong, and it must > lie dormant, biding it's time before one day in the future rising up again, > in a new form. All we can do now is believe J is worth fighting for. > > I close this by saying I have the utmost respect for all Jers, but things > must change, and radically if J is to live. > > J4 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
