My guess is that most experienced J users rely first on the Vocabulary. It is an easier starting point to find answers than the primer, phrases, index, dictionary and other references.
I would like see a Vocabulary that assists the beginner in the same way that it assists our most skillful users. Do we really need more options to explore to find the panacea for learning to "speak" J? Couldn't we just make modest improvement to our best source for understanding the language? Linda -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raul Miller Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2013 8:09 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Learning J language - I nitial thoughts On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 3:36 AM, Linda Alvord <[email protected]> wrote: > How many terms will you have to look up before you understand this? I have been wishing for a kind of wiki markup where I could mark a region of text as requiring some list of topics on the part of the reader, and then also identifying a topic which the the text addresses. If something like this could be designed, we could present initially simple definitions to the reader and reveal further detail as the reader visits other topics. Complexities here include the implementation mechanism (some people would prefer an automated approach - using cookies, perhaps - where at other times they would prefer a manual approach - using menus, perhaps), and identifying topics (addition, for example, could include topics of numbers, identities, rank, and grammar with associativity and commutativity falling under "grammar", and numbers themselves have a variety of types including counting of physical objects, promises for the future, measurements of distance and collections of different kinds of numbers [apples, oranges and eggs]). Unfortunately, this is a really good example of "it's simple when you understand it but not until then", and the layering means that you can understand something simple while not noticing the relevance of another issue. Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
