One reason I follow the J forums, is in response to the advice "if you are the smartest person In the room, find another room". There ought to be a corollary "when you are the dumbest person in the room, keep silent so as not to prove it." So I'm reluctant to document the questions I struggled with as I recently revisited J on my iphone, but here are some, in no particular order:
If I forget about JE JHS JVM, etc., do I need to find the definitions in the release notes? (Not to mention the J8 q? new mnemonics.) What are bullet commands? Why might I use them? Just to avoid quoting character arguments? What is the J approach to event handlers? Any IOS events J programs can handle? What is the difference between Jh and Js? Where is smoutput documented? Where is NuVoc page? (Love it!) (Btw, unlike other noobs, I started with a J folder which also had icons for 5 or 6 useful Jsoftware pages.) What are arguments to plot? Other options (like surface)? What is jwplot? (Would have been worse had I not known about locals and z local). Where is Ix? (Why wasn't it in help?) Is Hall a verb that calls to other H* nouns? (I know Eric is not going to resort to rape and paste programmimg!) How to distinguish verbs/nouns? How to interpret result of nl? How do I restore/repeat the initial output I got when I first ran the app? Would a newcomer think that the wonderful two character J? commands were part of the language? (I assume the initial caps are a thoughtful concession to IOS text entry auto correct?) Why, unlike most all other IOS apps, does J seem to revert to a clean session after a day or so? Conversely, how can I clear the session log when I do want to? Has anyone else been making use of J for IOS? Why are there so damn few reviews for it in the App Store? > On Feb 10, 2014, at 7:30 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > > If you would put together a list of words (and perhaps phrases?) that need > definition, I (or we) would be happy to fill in the definitions, and supply > a few small examples. > > We might need to go several rounds of this to adequately satisfy you, but > that's ok. > > Or maybe we have an adequate reference to refer you to? But if that were > the case, I imagine the search engines would have found it for you. So > instead let's maybe think about hashing out something that might be a > suitable addition to the J wiki? > > Thanks, > > -- > Raul > > > >> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 8:51 PM, Jim Russell <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> (Sorry, I got no further than "No," when I put my iphone back in my shirt >> pocket and "man boob" sent it.) >> >> More later when I try to recall all the dumb words phrases I was >> fruitlessly trying to find as I played with J on my iPhone this past week. >> >>> On Feb 9, 2014, at 8:22 PM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Do you mean like http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/vocabul.htm? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> >>> -- >>> Raul >>> >>> >>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Jim Russell <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>>> I suspect that a glossary of J (and related programming terms) would >> help a great deal. Or does one exist? >>>> >>>>> On Feb 9, 2014, at 1:30 AM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I was looking over NuVoc the other day, and thinking how it helped me >> learn >>>>> the J primitives. My next thought was how I wished that we could fix >> the J >>>>> search engine so that when newbies searched for stuff in the J wiki >> using >>>>> traditional programming lingo, they would automatically find the J >>>>> equivalent functions. >>>>> >>>>> When J gave new names to all the J programming elements, it was all for >>>>> good reasons. However that made it really hard to learn J by searching >> the >>>>> wiki for programming concepts, using common programming names. When I >> am >>>>> programming in J, I often come to a point where I know what I want to >> do, >>>>> and I know what most other programming languages would call what I >> want to >>>>> do. If I search for that name in the J wiki though, I usually come up >>>>> empty-handed. >>>>> >>>>> What we really need in NuVoc, as well as all of the J doc, is a set of >>>>> common-use keywords attached to every J concept. Thus if a newbie >> searches >>>>> for "assignment", he will get the vocabulary and dictionary pages for >> Is >>>>> (local) and Is (global), When he searches for "indexing" he will get >> the >>>>> Catalog pages. I could go on like this for quite awhile. >>>>> >>>>> Also when newbies or anyone stumbles upon a new concept in any of the >> J >>>>> doc, we should make it easy for that person to add new keywords to >> that doc >>>>> page. Hopefully the keywords they add will make it easier for the next >>>>> person to find that concept in the future. >>>>> >>>>> So my proposal is that each NuVoc page (and all J doc pages for that >>>>> matter) needs a list of keywords at (say) the bottom of the page, >> giving >>>>> common programming names for the J concept on that page. In that way, a >>>>> newbie searching for "assignment" would at least have a chance of >> finding >>>>> what he is looking for. >>>>> >>>>> However, my idea is more that just putting a list of keywords on every >> doc >>>>> page, As has been discussed on the J mail list, Newbies who are trying >> to >>>>> learn J, know what they are looking for, when they search for a >> particular >>>>> concept. What If we could make it so when someone finally does find >> what >>>>> they were looking for, they could easily add words to the keyword list >> on >>>>> the doc page they found. They could add the words that they were using >> to >>>>> (unsuccessfully) search for that concept. Then each doc page would >> start to >>>>> collect keywords that people commonly use for that concept, making it >> much >>>>> easier for newbies (and even casual J user oldies like me) to find that >>>>> concept in the future. >>>>> >>>>> There needs to be an easy (but controlled, and perhaps curated) way to >> put >>>>> a new keyword on any doc page, while that page is being viewed. There >> needs >>>>> to be a brief statement above the keyword block explaining what it is, >> how >>>>> to add a keyword, and why one should do it. >>>>> >>>>> I believe that in the long run, this keyword scheme could have a bigger >>>>> impact on reducing the "steep learning curve" of J than almost any >> other >>>>> documentation mechanism. >>>>> >>>>> Skip >>>>> >>>>> Skip Cave >>>>> Cave Consulting LLC >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
