On 6/23/07, John Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
More generally, one of the ways to learn is through selective ignorance: at the moment, you don't need to know about dyadic rank.
That' an interesting point.
I personally cannot learn anything by reading the manuals: I need to read and write programs.
yes, I learned Perl by aping the things I saw in the Perl Journal and other books I bought. I certainly only use the manual for occasional reference. I was hoping J would be different for me. But I am starting to think you are right, which is why I am stuyding "Learning J" again.
Being a believer in the principle that the best time to learn how to fly an airplane is when the pilot had the fish and you are being talked down by the tower, I find it helps if I have to solve a problem.
yes, for me J is just fascinating. it is a neat shorthand. But for practical things, Perl/PHP/Python along with Excel cover my personal and professional obligations completely. Sure, I will have problems writing 1-liners to calculate the center of an arbitrarily ranked array, but how often do I need to do that? I spent a long time thinking Haskell was God's Gift to Programming, it took 3 iterations before I finally gave it up. J is far more accessible than Haskell. And immediately more practical, with easy access to databases and Excel spreadsheets. I guess I could continue to fumble my way through the shootout examples, but I really felt I was abusing the help available here when I really just needed a string grip on "Learning J"
However, these are suggestions from my personal experience: you know what works best for you.
Thanks for the input John. -- J IRC Channel irc://irc.freenode.org/jsoftware ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
