I believe the "mud" versus "diamond" comment was a reference to the quote
APL is like a diamond. It has a beautiful crystal structure; all of its parts are related in a uniform and elegant way. But if you try to extend this structure in any way - even by adding another diamond - you get an ugly kludge. LISP, on the other hand, is like a ball of mud. You can add any amount of mud to it and it still looks like a ball of mud. (Joel Moses) or one like it. On 11/7/07, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 11/6/07, Oleg Kobchenko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Why is u/ not equivalent to a loop? > > There is a very severe performance penalty. > > Lisp/SmallTalk can be defined by itself. > > But because in APL control structure are deficient, it cannot. > > That's the whole mud vs diamond argument; and this control flow issue > > is at its core. > > This seems like a bunch of unrelated issues. > ... > Finally, I do not know about "mud' but diamond was > basically an alternate line-end character (albeit, one which > got special treatment from APL's goto, in that goto did > not recognize diamonds when counting lines). > > -- > Raul > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Devon McCormick, CFA ^me^ at acm. org is my preferred e-mail ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
