Hello Terrence;
My addled brain finds the posting protocol to those forums to be too
much to handle, I'll try to post some ideas here, and you are free to
use them in your own posts.
I did find the 'syntactic sugar' designation a bit harsh. IME, J is more
like syntactic octane. The power isn't in the more advanced treatment
of nouns, it's in the more advanced treatment of verbs. Lispoids may
counter that / is no more than mapcar, but what do they make of forks?
The refutation of p: as just another builtin has some merit though.
Looking at the shootout, I wonder if anything but an assembler need
apply, and what is the point of comparing high level languages on
execution time only, and demeaning the savings in programmer time that J
(and APL) offer.
Terrence Brannon wrote:
<quote
person="Danny Sauer"
url="http://alioth.debian.org/forum/message.php?msg_id=3619>
All J's array manipulation code does is provide
some convenient syntax.
</quote>
I attempted to refute this by saying that J can calculate array inverses and can
optimize repeated array scans, but would appreciate some more ammunition. If any
of you would like to join the growing fracas on the shootout forum, I would
appreciate some support.
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--
later ...
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|\/| Randy A MacDonald | APL: If you can say it, it's done.. (ram)
|/\| [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
|\ | | The only real problem with APL is that
BSc(Math) UNBF'83 | it is "still ahead of its time."
Sapere Aude | - Morten Kromberg
Natural Born APL'er | Looking for a whip-smart APL developer? Send me a note
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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