Here's a more recent Ken Iverson discussion on Computers and
Mathematical Notation:
http://tinyurl.com/ym8r64
or
http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/~mgr/404/burks/language/apl/camnweb/
camn.htm
This is J based, rather than APL.
-- Owen
Owen Densmore http://backspaces.net
On Dec 28, 2006, at 12:00 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> First of all, a big THANKS for all the interesting ideas. I've been
> trying to get my brain around all this for quite some time. And I
> think its time I sit down and start writing on the divide between
> Math and Computing.
>
> One of the more interesting discussions on this topic comes from the
> APL/Ken Iverson world. APL (A Programming Language) used a concise
> mathematical notation for its syntax. It was quite a hit at Xerox in
> the early to mid '70s and indeed was considered a great rapid
> prototyping language.
>
> One of Iverson's ideas was that mathematical notation was flawed and
> could easily be fixed by focusing on making it more parseable and
> less ambiguous. His 1979 Turing Award lecture was a wonderful
> summary of these ideas:
> Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979 Turing Award Lecture)
> by Kenneth E. Iverson, Communications of the ACM,
> Volume 23, Number 8, August 1980.
> http://elliscave.com/APL_J/tool.pdf
>
> In a sense, Ken was the one of the pioneers poking at the topic we're
> discussing. I suspect Turing, Von Neuman, and others were there too.
>
> Ken's APL work has been carried on by Ken's son Eric and Roger Hui,
> both of whom worked closely with Ken. APL has been morphed into the
> J Programming Language:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_programming_language
>
> I've taken a run at J with some success. Its reasonably cross
> platform. But boy, the learning curve is steep! The power of J,
> however, is considerable. If any FRIAMers start in on J, let me
> know. These sites are representative of the leaders of the J
> community:
> http://olegykj.sourceforge.net/
> .. and all the External links at the end of the Wikipedia article.
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore http://backspaces.net
>
>
>
>
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