Have you seen the wikipedia entry on rank? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank_(J_programming_language)
I've a plane to catch, I will be back next week and maybe check in somehow. But I happen to like the perspective expressed on that page (I, um, wrote it). That said, I will agree with Henry, that practice is what it's really all about. But the unlearning issue is mostly for people who have overtrained, I think, and possibly also relevant for people with not enough time (does anyone have enough time?). The exercise of converting knowledge to J, or APL, is incredibly educational, and really teaches you what you do not understand about a subject and a notation. It's incredibly easy to get a glib understanding of things and only by actually putting your knowledge into action do you know that you have moved beyond that. There's also a cultural aspect to any language, and a desire to mimic the "look and feel" of other people's work. That's a deceptively useless skill. Fun, though, sometimes. The useful version of this skill shows up, I think, as a willingness to work with your coworker's programming style (with careful offerings of change). Anyways, I need to get moving. Thanks, -- Raul On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Joe Bogner <joebog...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Ian - > > Thanks for the reply. I was more so interested in APL from the > perspective of how to think in arrays or idioms of array programming. > For example, Devon posted the old trick of counting > parentheses/brackets yesterday. > > I'm getting there, but still feel like I'm approaching things from the > wrong perspective sometimes. > > I don't see myself using a traditional APL. I am quite demotivated the > non-ascii characters. I ask after learning LISP I found that the > concepts applied to different interpreters. > > I stumbled upon this wiki post from you last night while researching, > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/APL2JPhraseBook, which encourages > unlearning APL. If I were to make a poor metaphor, I took algebra > based physics in college. I learned that there was a calculus based > physics later and studied some if it on my own and realized how much > simpler, or less repetitive at least to learn it would have been. To > some degree, with J being a superset of APL, I can see why it would > make sense to unlearn. I won't go down that rabbit hole here though... > > As Henry Rich said: practice, practice, practice is probably best. > I've been on a good run of practicing every chance I get for probably > five months now. I definitely appreciate the group's feedback on the > public practice. All the other languages I've learned had some other > person in my life that also knew it or learned it (aside from LISP, > which has a fair amount of open source to learn from). It's difficult > to learn if there's not an avenue for feedback. > > Since we're in programming, I'll post some code. I wanted to write > something today that would take this string and produce this result: > > '=:' splitstring "1 > ',' splitstring > {. 'reads' splitstring > 'foo=:baz,abc=:123 reads from q' > ┌───┬────┐ > │foo│baz │ > ├───┼────┤ > │abc│123 │ > └───┴────┘ > > I still can't figure out why this doesn't work: > > '=:' splitstring each ',' splitstring > {. 'reads' splitstring > 'foo=:baz,abc=:123 reads from q' > ┌──────────┬───────────┐ > │┌───┬────┐│┌────┬────┐│ > ││foo│:baz│││abc=│123 ││ > │└───┴────┘│└────┴────┘│ > └──────────┴───────────┘ > > I can normally use each on boxed list of strings and have it operate > as though it was a single string. > > So I stumble around trying bits and pieces out until something works. > I suspect it has something to do with rank, which I understand at a > high level when it's something I have explicit control over, > http://csilo.com/!article?2013/10/15/J-rank-in-a-nutshell > > Roger posted mentioned an essay yesterday that is apropos: > http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/perlis78.htm > > If you take a problem, even a very simple one, and give it to a class > of 50 people to program in APL, there’s a very good chance that you’re > going to get 35 to 40 different solutions. To some, that’s a horrible > state of affairs. To me it indicates the language really has some > power to it, some value; it’s just perfect for people, in a sense, to > use who like to think originally, if possibly poorly, about things. > > I do think it's wonderful. I just want to get my solutions less on the > fringe and more in the middle. Perhaps I'm getting there. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
