I use J for all my own work because I get results fast. Example: I am
currently working on a database project, a big key/value store written
as about 200KLOC of C++, and I proposed a major design change.
Management was supportive but concerned, so I offered to write a
simulation of the system including the changes. I said I could do it in
8 days, and using J, I did. Well worth doing, too, as it led to
refinements in the design. I don't know how long it would have taken in
C/C++, but I would be thinking months rather than days.
The combination of interpretive execution, terseness of expression, and
array-level thinking makes me more productive using J than I've ever
been in a scalar language. I completely disagree with you about
languages being equally good. When it comes to getting a program up and
running quickly, J has an edge in most of the places I've used it.
J is a language for describing a computation. C/C++ is a language for
telling a computer how to execute a computation. If you don't need to
focus on the execution details - that is, if you can take your head out
from under the hood and think only about what needs to be done - you can
save a lot of time and effort by staying at the higher level. You have
to train yourself to do that, though, and doing so is harder than you
would expect.
Henry Rich
On 11/28/2017 3:59 PM, Andrew Dabrowski wrote:
As much as I've complained about J in these forums I've been having a
good time translating some simple code into J. Someone gave me wise
advice, to stick with explicit definitions until I know the language
well, which advice I have cordially ignored because I'm having too
much fun playing code golf with tacit tangles.
I was fascinated by J because it seemed to try to build on aspects of
the human linguistic system. Natural language unfolds in one
dimension, time, so everything relevant to understanding a particular
word in a sentence either came before it or is yet to come. J seemed
to emulate this by having verbs which relate directly only to objects
on the immediate left and immediate right. Moreover J seemed to be
following a linguistic paradigm in have nouns which are inert, verbs
that act on nouns, and adverbs which modify objects. This seemed like
a promising way to exploit humans' natural linguistic capabilities.
But maybe that's not way the J community currently sees J. Do you
love J most because of (pick only one)
1. the NL inspired syntax;
2. the suite of array utilities;
3. the concision of J code;
4. its being open-source; or
5. _____________________?
I've come to feel that all programming languages are ugly compromises
that are about equally good/bad at solving practical problems, and the
"best" language is just the one you know the best. I used to be
contemptuous of Perl, but after having learned it well enough for my
purposes I now kind of enjoy the brain teaser quality of trying to fit
problems into its procrustean bed (although I still think it's a silly
language). I have no doubt that I could live happily with J as my
primary language, but only after an extended period of being
handcuffed to it and forced to assimilate its quirks. I don't know
that I'll have the patience for that.
Is there any project in the J repos that demonstrates the strength of
J, as opposed to just showing that it's at least as good as other
languages? Any project that would have been significantly harder to
complete with say Python? Does J have any killer advantage, even in
just one aspect of programming? Or does J just appeal to you the way
pistachio ice-cream might, it just tickles your palate in a
no-accounting-for-taste way? That's how it appeals to me.
I was hoping someone could talk me into studying J seriously, but now
it looks to me like a language which, with APL, has had enormous
beneficial influence on many other languages, but which has failed to
learn in its turn from them. J seems a tad solipsistic.
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