Being a novice on J my oppions should be take with a grain of salt,
but here we go:
Most of the J code I read takes me a not so short time as desirable
to be understood. Then the moment I'm able to get understand (?) it
is more an aha! moment than the typical "oh, I see" you get with other
languages like python, lucid, or, well, you name it.
In order to speed up a little code samples posted to this list - for
me the main source of examples to learn from- , most of the time I
make use of online tools (touchquery; the one from uni-potsdam). The
acceleration comes from two sides:
a) Immediate access to J vocabulary docs.
b1) No need to figure out if a verb is in the monadic or diadic case,
b2) Grouping (tree viewing) is made explicit, so the "intent" is a
little clearer.
Two other factors seems to make the code I have seen written with J criptic are:
. Not using of mnemonic names for concepts used within expressions.
. In general, definition of verbs in a "where"-language manner is not used.
. Tacit definitions appearance. They look like non tacit but with @
and & instead of x and y. Much more at and et that x or y!
Regards,
Marcelino
> But readability is a real problem. What is usually missing from many
> programs, especially J tacit, is the intent of something. Say I see
> something like this:
>
> < @ (({. + i.@{:)@[ { ] )
>
> It would certainly help to have some idea what this is supposed to do. What
> its arguments are and what it returns. Documentation really helps.
>
> But J expressions can be intimidating. It has always bothered me that I
> could attack a FORTRAN program spanning several pages comfortably. But a J
> program of just a few lines which do exactly the same thing is hard for me
> to get into.
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Erling Hellenäs <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all !
>>
>> Yes, maybe we should all be concerned about writing readable code instead
>> of the shortest and most cryptic code? Maybe we should also write writeable
>> code? Find a way to write that allows us to get the expressions right the
>> first time?
>> J is more of a notation than a language? The value of a notation is
>> determined by clarity, but also readability? Maybe readability and
>> writeability, in the sense I explained above, should get higher priority as
>> design goals for our future J?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Erling Hellenäs
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2014-07-12 07:40, Raul Miller wrote:
>>
>>> I would not generalize to higher rank arrays without a model of why I'd be
>>> using them.
>>>
>>> In other words, v=: {"_1 |:~&0 2 is probably good enough.
>>>
>>> There are some interesting contradictions here - while one needs to be
>>> comfortable thinking mathematically to get decent performance out of a
>>> system, usually what we are building is a mix of instant and delayed
>>> gratification and we usually assume our audience has no direct interest in
>>> the math we are performing (indirect interest, yes - sometimes).
>>>
>>> Often I think we go overboard, and we should throw back in some exposure
>>> to
>>> some of the more robust concepts (especially for the kids, so they have
>>> something interesting to play with). But professional adults tend to be
>>> under a lot of time pressure, and as a result their needs often seem to be
>>> a mix of the very basic and the childish.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, it seems like anything worthwhile takes time and effort.
>>>
>>> Anyways, professional software design often centers around use cases and
>>> similar models which are aimed at extracting the important concepts about
>>> what people need to get done and how they want to work. And that kind of
>>> information is what you need if you are going to properly generalize
>>> application code.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
