Concerning the page: http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/SpecialCombinations
The dust kicked up when horns are locked is obscuring for me some important pragmatic questions, to which I personally would like to know the answers. Let me break them down as follows: 1. Why is it good for anyone but a speed-freak to know about J's hidden speedups? 2. Ditto for people starting out learning to code seriously in J? 3. Ditto for people who are just curious about J? 4. Why is it good to have an exhaustive reference to J's hidden speedups in NuVoc, of all places (the beginner's way-into the J world)? 5. How well hidden are J's "hidden" speedups? Is a beginner so likely to fall foul of them that a good knowledge of them is needed right from Day 1? What does this say to the J-curious about the design of the language? 6. Why does J need speedups at all, hidden or otherwise? If it does, why bother to hide them? Why not just have libraries of faster alternatives to common idioms? Package them as Foreigns if we want to persist in avoiding expressive reserved names. Does J need hidden speedups because a central feature of J (subtle bolting-together of array-savvy functions to make new ones) denies you the scope to code efficiently, which is inherent in looping scalar languages? This surely must be uppermost in the minds of C++ programmers (and others) as they approach J. For those of us who've been writing J for decades, question 6 will seem like a non-issue. Languages have "optimization" like houses have plumbing. Period. But to people shopping for a new and better language, either to learn themselves or to recruit / train their development teams in, I'd say 6 is the most important issue of all where J is concerned. On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 6:48 PM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes. > > Thanks, > > -- > Raul > > > > > On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 1:40 PM, james faure <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Is that a serious question ? After all the time I spent explaining the > alternative ? > > > > ________________________________ > > From: Chat <[email protected]> on behalf of Raul Miller > <[email protected]> > > Sent: Monday, March 5, 2018 7:38:27 PM > > To: Chat forum > > Subject: Re: [Jchat] Where is J going ? > > > > Why do you think optimizations are bad? > > > > Thanks, > > > > -- > > Raul > > > > > > On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 1:30 PM, james faure <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I mean Special combination: http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/ > SpecialCombinations > >> > >> Vocabulary/SpecialCombinations - J Wiki<http://code.jsoftware. > com/wiki/Vocabulary/SpecialCombinations> > >> code.jsoftware.com > >> J typically executes verbs one by one, right-to-left, each verb not > knowing what is coming next a =: 1000 1000 ?@$ 0 NB. 1 million random > values in a 1000 by 1000 ... > >> > >> > >> > >> ________________________________ > >> From: Chat <[email protected]> on behalf of Brian > Schott <[email protected]> > >> Sent: Monday, March 5, 2018 6:24:45 PM > >> To: Chat forum > >> Subject: Re: [Jchat] Where is J going ? > >> > >> I think it means stop_condition. > >> > >> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36 AM, Devon McCormick <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > >>> Again, I ask, in > >>> " 4 The SC based system has has got to go... " > >>> what is "SC based"? > >>> > >>> > >>> > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
