Hi Guys,
I would just like to suggest as looking at this in a different
perspective.
I have a few/limited success in teaching J using the standard symbols
but I do have a better success in teaching J with the "primitives"
add-on. Of course the there are dis-advantages and the most glaring one
is the loss of tacit programming.
foo=: monad define
NB. Look at the following while turning off your J knowledge
NB. Create 2 copies of a 10 by 5 integer
data=. 2 copy integers 10, 5
NB. Create a new command which would sum a table
sumtable=. plus table
NB. Get the primary key, first column
primarykey=. 1 take rank 1 data
NB. Remove the primary key
data=. drop rank 1 data
NB. get the total value by each key
sumdata=. (nub primarykey) stitch primarykey sumtable key data
)
fubar=: 3 : 0
data=. 2 #i. 10 5
primarykey=. 1 {."1 data
sumdata=. (~. primarykey),. primarykey +/ /. }. "1 data
)
But if you would take into consideration me teaching 10 programmers J
using primitives add-on and all of them remembered a few of the commands
in comparison to teaching 10 programmers using J notation and 8 to 9 of
the students walking away confused. So if your objective is to teach, I
would start them with general concepts and use the "primitives" addon
then later on ... for advance topics, you slowly introduce the actually
J notation. It works for me.
I believe somebody else here has done this too (just forgot who he is).
r/Alex
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