On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:54 PM, Matthew Brand <[email protected]> wrote: > Does anybody know a list of, or maybe could come up with suggestions > for, the weaknesses of J in terms of programming tasks? > > For example, programming tasks that are much easier to solve in a > different language than in J? I.e. problems where J programmers would > advise to use a different language instead?
J is weak where the problem definition is bogged down with lots of complexities, especially where those complexities are largely irrelevant. These kinds of situations hit J from several different directions and generally none of J's architecture is very helpful in addressing them. You can wind up with a lot of code micro-managing these features, and this code bulks up your program and can take considerable time to execute. Likewise, I would avoid using J when I was making incremental changes to an existing project written in some other language (but would probably bring in J if I found myself having to re- implement J features to get my job done in a reasonable amount of time). > http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/oopbad.htm. ... It looks like the author of this page believed C.J.Date who wrote that there was no good, consistent way of creating object-relational mappings. In fact, this is trivial: A table is a named collection of equal-length columns. A column is a regular sequence of data items (all of the same type). A row is a reference to a table and a locally valid index into that table. That said, for OO programming to work properly, i really think you a need a robust implementation (like smalltalk, and not one of the crippled alternatives that have become so popular). That said, there are some good business reasons for people to be using "crippled" languages. For example, they tend to be non-threatening, easy to implement, early on, and they tend to offer lots of room for businesses to add value, once people start using them. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
