On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Yuvaraj Athur Raghuvir<[email protected]> wrote: > Now, my observation is that just as visual languages for an abstract > domain are difficult to master, so are languages that use signs the > way J does. ... > Does this resonate with you?
When I have dealt with an audience with no programming background, J seems to be easier to teach than other languages, until we get into issues like fancy I/O where J requires the user understand a verbose vocabulary. That said, when dealing with a novice audience, I have not been trying to teach all of a language -- I am just trying to teach enough to give the user some confidence an ability to run programs that they write and some basic fluency so they have something which they can build on. For fluency, I think J leverages some fairly extensive bodies of mathematics. But this can be tricky since most math classes use different notations from J. So when learning math, you often need to set aside J so you can learn the class's notation and then once you have mastered the basics you can come back and figure out how to use J to express some of the class's concepts. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
