Prior to learning APL back in the late 70's, I had developed fluency in Fortran, Basic, and Algol. In the context of Petrochemical R&D, I was requested to learn APL in support of our petrochemical research program. I was set free with and expense account in the Princeton University Book Store to get all the literature needed to learn it.
I did find the APL character set to be disorienting; still, after a couple of weeks I had mastered APL enough to start using it. Yes, I agree that using APL required a new way of thinking - but that challenge was a great experience, and, I believe even helped me in later delvings into C. The APL way of thinking seems to work well in J too. My bigest achievement was the modeling and simulation of chemical epoxidation reaction technology in a couple of weeks (using STSC's APL*Plus), which a whole team of experts working together for perhaps a year, weren't able to accomplish using more conventional methods. Interesting, a note about the Atlantic Richfield company's use of APL may actually derive from my Epoxidation model at Oxirane International, then 50% owned by Atlantic Richfield. For me the benefits of APL were obvious. What I originally found as a weird character set (I'm a PhD Chemical Engineer, not a Mathematician), start to fit comfortably like an old glove. Now I'm in the midst of learning J. I don't find the issue of beauty to be terribly relevant. What is important is that despite the use of ASCII digraphs, and an occasional trigraph, I am slowly getting used to it. The extra capability - many more primitives - composition conjunctions - tacit programing - all at to the power and flexibility. That has to come with an increased steepness in the learning curve, but I don't really find this intimidating at all. I do find some of the expressions in the programming forum to be incomprehensible, but less incomprehensible as time goes on. Since I'm no mathematician, I may never understand some of them, and probably will never need to.... I think that the issue with "J Readibility" may lie more in the area of "subject comprehensibility". It's not just a programming language, but a method of notation. Notation needs probably vary substantially with a person's field of technical endeavors. Personally, I'm satisfied with the core of the J language. My concerns for the language are twofold: the need for a well documented GUI toolkit; and the need for aggressive marketing of what I believe is the best programming language ever devised. The nitpicking, which I gather does exist, probably doesn't even merit answering. While always a fan of Kenneth Iverson, I never had the opportunity to meet him. I think that one of the greatest things the J community could do in his memory would be to promote and market aggressively the use of J throughout the Information Techology sector. (Robert Graf, PhD) Bob from Boynton Beach, FL dly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The beauty of APL is not just in the eye of the beholder - there is > intrinsic beauty in an APL expression. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Subject%3A-Re%3A-J-readability-tp14430048s24193p14448973.html Sent from the J Chat mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
