I'm working on a presentation of J to APLers I plan to give as a talk next month. One thing I plan to do is to show some powerful J expressions and get some feedback about how one would do them in APL.
I'll let everyone know how that turns out. On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 6:58 AM, Matthew Brand <[email protected]>wrote: > What are the benefits of choosing APL over J if you do not know either > to begin with? > > Let's not mention the ascii vs non-ascii character set (that has been > done to death by now!) or the cost, I want to know about comparisons > of what you can practically do with them and how easy it is to do > those things. > > Is there a particular algorithm that anybody knows that is > significantly easier to write or which executes "better" in J than > APL? > > I have never used APL but I gather from what I read that there are > more inconsistencies in the language of APL compared to J, but that > there are more libraries available for APL. > > > > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Morten Kromberg <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Hi Ian! > > > > Your subject line caught my eye... ;-) And since you're posting old news > > about Dyalog APL to the J Chat forum, I feel it is my duty to respond > with > > an update (not that I want to argue with your choice of J if it feels > > comfortable for what you are doing): > > > >> J's portability between Windows, Mac and PDA alone sees to that for me. > > > > OK, we don't have a "native" Mac version, but Dyalog APL does run on a > Mac > > in a variety of different ways (Under Wine and various Virtual Machine > > frameworks). The same GUI is available on most platforms, so I think that > > your ability to produce good looking and portable user interfaces using > this > > route should be no worse than using J - and could be significantly better > > depending on what you are trying to do. > > > >> Code written by people who didn't appreciate []ML<-3 > > > > OK, this DOES seem like an odd reason to switch to J ;-) (for those who > do > > now know, []ML<-3 puts Dyalog APL in "APL2 Compatibility Mode"). > > > >> []AV's are devastatingly different > > > > True, but now that APL has "gone Unicode", []AV is just an obsolete > > 256-element character vector which is there in order to allow old code > which > > references it directly to continue working. Dyalog APL now probably has > the > > most complete (and "integrated") Unicode implementation of any array > > language. Unlike in J (last time I looked), a Finn can just type: > > > > 'ä'='Säppäla' > > 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 > > > >> Code that needs frequent execution of B[a;b;c;d;e...]<-1 (uses lots of > > memory ... etc) > > > > These problems are now pretty much solved in Dyalog APL (SQUAD indexing > has > > been added to avoid the need for execute, and indexing has been rewritten > to > > be memory-efficient). > > > >> Also I don't have a spare couple of grand to keep up with the latest > >> releases of Dyalog APL and APL+Win -- but that's not the key issue > >> because I could always find a customer to buy me the products I need. > > > > A "non-commercial" Dyalog APL will set you back £50, and if you are only > > doing a small amount of infrequent commercial work, you can pick the 2% > > royalty agreement so that you have no up-front costs. > > > >> No, the key issue for me is that I've written J code in Windows, > >> including GUI code, transferred the files to the Mac, also to my HP > >> iPAQ, an easy matter because they're ASCII txt files and it's just a > >> case of moving the dongle... and the app works First Time. > > > > Using text files to store APL code is becoming a common technique with > > Dyalog APL too (and the system takes care of updating the script files > when > > you edit code while debugging - so you can do development both by editing > > the scripts and using the system interactively). > > > >> I could go on and on... This was back in the last century, and things > may > > have gotten better with APL since... but I doubt it's that better. > > > > This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgGc9kruiLQ > > > > Well, I don't think it was *that* bad to begin with, but I am happy that > > some of your most important complaints seem to have been resolved. We've > > certainly been busy! > > > >> J is going to be my tool of choice. > > > > I'm not trying to argue with that, just needed to set the record straight > > (as I see it ;-) regarding some of the things you state are "wrong" with > > APL. > > > >> BTW who's seen > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_APL_programming_language > > > > I'd better take a look at that ... :-) > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
