Hi again,
I have written 22 pages of draft documentation beginning a document
called "Mathematical Experiments in J for High Schools" that is aimed at
high school teachers. This documentation is located at:
www.bcompanion.com/experimentation
J is, quite rightly, directed towards the use of tacit programming.
It does not conceive of a different audience who can get by for
most of their work with explicit programming. The one thing J lacks for my
purposes is a simple, one line way of creating an explicit function in
exactly the same way that a tacit function is created.
This would make a considerable difference to what I am trying to
initiate. To demonstrate, I have written the documentation as if
such a facility already existed. Its implementation would enable
me to continue with the documentation.
The dilemma I have is that, as Ric suggested, it is not a good idea to
introduce tacit programming until teachers are thoroughly comfortable with
explicit programming. In addition, students are not writing J themselves,
but they need to be convinced that the J language they see is equivalent
to the mathematical formula it models. Under these circumstances,
tacit J is not the tool to put before any but the most gifted students.
However, the fundamentals of explicit J can cover a lot of the ground
I need. It is my intention later in the documentation to explain the
limitations of explicit J and the advantages of tacit J. Having explained
the "why" I would then take the teacher through the "what" and "how" of
tacit programming.
.
I accept that I have no chance of persuading anyone to allow the
replacement of two character symbols with one character. While I know that
there are names I can use, I have included my own short replacements for the
J verbs I have used to date. I have used Mathematical terminology rather
than J terminology whenever I could for obvious direction to the
document's audience
Don
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