dly
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 29-Jun-06, at 5:23 PM, Randy MacDonald wrote:
I'm wondering if the syntax of J is all that much like English.
Unless I use it implicitly, I've never unconsciosly used a fork nor
a hook. ("the sum times the difference" for "difference of squares"
might be an exception, although there are those 'the's...) Algebra
is more what I'd call it.
I believe that this implementation of J is built on SAX and has a
certain history.
That J should have a syntax more like a consistent and coherent
natural language (that is NOT English-like to be sure) and less like
the convoluted special cases of mixt (sic) mathematical notations
was, I believe, the goal of Ken Iverson. He told me this was also
his goal in first developing the notation which became known as APL.
He developed this notation because he appreciated simplicity. Simple
consistent notation could be a tool of thought. He was perfectly
capable of understanding computing in other forms of notation but
preferred simplicity. He was not inclined to couch ideas in
difficult to understand language.
Your own choice of fork and hook reveal a predilection for another
metalanguage description of J which is perfectly fine as long as you
are sure that it is equivalent to the J terms for describing J and
that it is well understood by the person with whom you wish to
communicate.
See my previous post copied below and later an answer to your other
question.
dly dydre at sympatico.ca
Fri Jun 16 17:43:54 HKT 2006
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> On 16-Jun-06, at 3:24 AM, Stefano Lanzavecchia wrote:
>
> True, not into the syntax, but into their standard libraries. LINQ
> will move
> map/reduce even closer to the actual syntax of the language. But
> it's up to
> the people to use it. I would.
I once (1989) asked Ken Iverson why people did not adopt the same
syntax for their code as for the primitive operators of APL. This
led to a number of conversations about even correcting some of the
implementations of APL primitives that were not ideal. He explained
the need to get rid of the index origin. He talked about J.
But then, there are a lot of people contributing to J.
Like natural language, programming language can become pidgin or creole.
Donna
dydre at sympatico.ca
ALSO
Hello Donna;
So, what was your original question? I didn't find an answer in
that post.
As I haven't yet replied to your e-mail you might find my original
question on this subject by looking at the earliest post in June
which compared results displayed in the JFE to my HP45 and an amusing
story of a prodigy who could calculate with amazing precision. Or my
restatement in many other posts most recently asked and answered.
On 29-Jun-06, at 2:08 PM, dly wrote:
Now this was my original point!
I wanted to know the SIGNIFICANT digits. (oddly enough the subject
of my post) and I wanted this to be reflected no matter what the
for of display or internal storage.
see my IMD (in my dreams) post
Donna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 29-Jun-06, at 12:22 PM, Don Guinn wrote:
I remember something about a convention which has been lost with
the advent of computers of writing a number, say "2.5" implied
that the measurement was good to a tenth, where "2.500" implied it
was good to a thousant.
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