Raul Miller wrote: > In my experience, once you have picked an application domain, > you can treat most of the domain' specific issues with half a > dozen to a dozen J verbs. This means that most of J is not > useful within that domain. > Of course, different domains wind up using different verbs, > and also different people use different approaches.
That's interesting/good to hear, yet typical (I think) for most programming languages. In the BASIC language family during the past 30 years (I've used versions of MS Basic since its beginning in 1975 on the MITS Altair), I've worked mostly with textual applications rather than numeric applications. Thus, as you say, most of the language didn't apply to that area--something I'm fast finding in the J language, too. > But the "real why" rests more in the realm of tensor algebra, > and other mathematical topics. Geez, I hope J can do more than only advanced math! I'm familiar by name with many of the areas of advanced math, but, frankly, when I was a math "major" in high school in the very early 1960s, calculus wasn't even taught at that level yet. It was considered college-only material back then--and when I *did* get to college, I switched from math to music. (C'est la vie!) I'm aware of musical applications of APL, and, beyond textual applications, that's another major reason for my investigation of J. (I should note, from a mathematical standpoint, that I have an interest as well in stock market analysis, and ever since high school I've had an interest in elementary number theory.) > Well... J comes with a variety of books and a great many > examples. The dictionary is meant to be a reference work, > not a tutorial, but these other books adopt different approaches. > And then you haev J's labs, which also present a wide variety > of examples. > I am not sure if you are not aware of these resources, or if > you are objecting to their character or something else? Heavens, I'm not objecting to anything! I'm well aware of all of J's resources--there's a huge amount of info, but it's not always well indexed or interconnected. I've collected lots of J/APL info outside of the Jsoftware site as well. > We probably could use some tutorial work on text processing with J... That is currently my primary focus and, at the moment, my primary frustration--so I appreciated your understanding of the situation. > But if you are not aware of any of these resources, I think you > should poke around. You will probably find more than you > can absorb in a day, a month or even a year. Considering the quantity (and sometimes terseness) of J material available, I think that's an understatement! ;-) In the programming forum I see many cases where individuals have used and "lived" with J for, say, the past 10-15 years and who still discover new aspects of and information about the language. In other words, I think a person could profitably spend *many years* learning and absorbing the language and its intricacies. Harvey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
