Mattia Landoni ,
I want to amplify Bill Lam's suggestion that you put special attention to Henry
Rich's J Reference Card and the main Vocabulary listing. Both are extremely
valuable; anybody who intends to learn J might as well start getting familiar
with them immediately.
I've spent a good deal of time browsing and drilling from the J Reference Card.
What makes it so valuable is the way it is composed of tiny "virtual"
J-session examples. By seeing sample input and output along with an associated
name for what is going on, you are introduced to (or remineded of) what is
going on in each case. The transformations shown on that card are the main
building blocks of the language. Writing J is very much a matter of thinking
in terms of the primaries.
My main additional advice is to read widely and immersively. Keep reading basic
material past the point where it's all too familiar, and keep poking at
material that is beyond your ability to make sense of. Over time a shift will
occur in the range of J code you can just barely understand.
Also, be prepared to persevere despite not learning J so fast as you may have
imagined.
>From what you've written I'm guessing that you're set to learn J more easily
>than many programmers. Familiarity and comfort with mathematics is enormously
>helpful because so many of the best demonstrations of J are mathematical.
>Indeed, my nomination for the single most important thing to appreciate about
>the language is this: J is a mathematical notation that happens to be
>executable on computers.
--
Tracy B. Harms
A good programming language is a conceptual universe
for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis
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