Thank you.
I have, since about 1961, dealt with computer languages from MAD
(Michigan Algorithmic Decoder) through Fortran, early Basic, turbo
Basic, Pascal, C++ and APL*Plus then J . The earlier languages were
compiled and the compilers used "assembly" code. C and its relatives,
as far as I could C, led to a bloating in code for many things (e.g.
a growth in memory requirements for word processing). The problem with
most of these is that a great deal of programming was and is dealing
with the handling of data and vectors or matrices through explicit
looping. While I recognize that much of J and APL depends on
C(+whatever) for coding, the advantages ro the user are that much of
this is built in so that the user can leave this to the "idiot box" and
get on to the actual problem of concern. Looping and if then "what next
" situations are reduced (APL could handle these by a branching to one
of several choices -i.e. a "goto" and J has added such branching.
My point is that the languages developed by Iverson and those who worked
with him, were a different approach -where the actual dealing with the
problem was paramount and most of the necessary background operations
can be handled automatically by the "idiot box". Yes, the fact that J
is interpreted rather than compiled (eventually, in whatever language is
used , into "get this, put it where, get that put it somewhere, bring
the two together by counting on 2 fingers very quickly and putting the
result somewhere else").
Often we forget the principal of KISS.
An opinion of an old fart (Electrical Engineering , not Computer Science).
Don Kelly
On 2017-07-05 2:39 PM, Devon McCormick wrote:
I agree with Don's suggestion. I've also found things like "++" to be a
little notational wart in the C; it extends to "--", both pre- and post-fix
forms, but is similar to nothing else in the language. Learning about it
gives you nothing of value that's generally applicable elsewhere.
On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 1:44 PM, Don Kelly <[email protected]> wrote:
Why? Is this accomplishing anything ? Is the value of t changed?
t=:1 2 3
t+3 or 3+t give 4 5 6 but t is not changed
to have a change in t then t=:t+3 works and its meaning is clear.
I would suggest that the value of J (as with APL) is that it is not C and
non-C thinking is a benefit.
Don Kelly
On 2017-07-04 10:55 AM, 'Mike Day' via Programming wrote:
Not multiple assignment, but copula-related.
I've often wondered why J doesn't have the C family feature of assignments
such as
t =: 1 2 3
[t+=: 3
4 5 6
I don't know what it's called, and I realise it's only an arguably
attractive
feature, not an essential one, but would be useful, especially when
translating
(or plagiarising) to J from C-like code.
John Scholes et al managed to include it in Dyalog APL many years ago;
it's
in his "dfns" (dynamic functions, I think) as well as their more
conventional
APL functions and session operations. If I recall correctly, John spells
out rules
for passing values to variables of local scope within dfns using such
operators.
Dyalog doesn't have constructs like t++, though.
Thanks,
Mike
On 04/07/2017 06:40, HenryRich wrote:
Here is a feature that I have wanted for a long time:
http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Interpreter/Requests#
Expanded_Multiple_Assignment
It attempts to solve the problem of moving verb arguments into
variable-names. Allows defaults and multilevel arguments. I will
implement this within a month or so, so get your comments in ASAP.
Henry Rich
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