Hmm. APL was designed for interactive applied mathematics (sort of a super-calculator tool). I don't think it was intended for "building systems". The fact that people used it for customization macros tends to remind me of the guy who wrote a linking loader in TECO. People used to ask him:
"Why did you write a linker in TECO?" "Because I can." It's frightening how much I occasionally identify with this worldview. > On Wed, May 08, 2002 at 11:14:43PM -0400, Gregg C Levine wrote: > > I'm surprised that no mention was made of APL, for example, as it > > could be used for building the systems, such as the current > family of > > Z servers. I'm putting that thought down, because I happen to know > > that the language was originally written for creating IBM systems. > There's a loud bang, and suddenly your foot is missing, but you don't > remember enough matrix algebra to know why. (Apologies to David Boyes > for stealing his line.) Close. It's: "APL: There is a loud bang and your foot disappears. You're sure that it happened somewhere in the logic of the statement of calculus, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to determine where, and you can't find a terminal with the right character set to run the debugger to determine why the program misfired. Eventually you expire before you remember to )OFF you workspace."
