On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Linda Alvord <[email protected]> wrote: > 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?
Honestly? I think that that's not something I am in a position to judge. Once upon a time, I did not know J. So over several years, I tried to spend a half an hour a day learning something I did not know. But my memories of my difficulties from that time are dim. I can tell you whether I am happy with the information I read, but I cannot tell you with any accuracy how other people will feel. Anyways, I now have a reasonably decent grasp of J's structure, but I struggle to understand other people's issues well enough to be useful to them -- their issues seem to me to have some differences from what I remember my issues being. Note also that I have a similar set of learning issues when I am reading other reference material (like an english dictionary, or a spanish dictionary). Until I've a basic familiarity with the subjects being discussed, it's hard for me to understand the thoughts being conveyed. That said, I feel I would define the "meaning" of a symbol as a reference to some large group of experiences (or, more precisely: as a reference to how I observe some aspect of those experiences) and a "definition" as a collection of symbols which make similar reference. Our struggle, here, I think, has to do with conveying the experiences so we can have an adequate basis for the definitions. Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
