Hi Raul, great information! Very much appreciated!
By the way: I think, the "J"-part of "Comparison of programming languages" in the wikipedia is partly wrong. Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages It implies, that non of these attributes can be applied to J: Imperative,object oriented,functional, procedural, generic, reflective, eventdriven By reading through https://www.learningj.com I got the impression, that some of the above attributes fit...but I am bloody newbie... Additon: All attributes has been assigned to APL... Cheers! Meino On 07/04 11:42, Raul Miller wrote: > I would add: > > Programming languages in general experience some language drift > because of changes to the underlying available hardware. This requires > changes to all parts of the supporting software systems. Considerable > effort is invested in retaining backwards compatibility, but it's not > perfect. > > J also has been extended at various times. As a general rule, most of > these changes attempt to retain backwards compatibility (ideally with > radically improved performance). The most frequent exception to this > rule takes what was previously an error case and replaces it with > something else. > > In a few examples, implementers decided that that approach would > require too much work. Perhaps the most notable of these was that > initially implicit arguments to J's verbs used the names x. and y. but > this had an unfortunate interaction with J's locale reference syntax > and the names x. and y. were dropped and replaced with x and y (with > no trailing dot). > > Anyways, generally speaking, these sorts of changes tend to be > accompanied with documentation on how to cope with them for existing > code bases. And, it's usually pretty easy to learn about the > alternatives. That said, we still have some work to do... > > I hope this helps, > > > -- > Raul > > On Mon, Jul 4, 2022 at 9:14 AM Jan-Pieter Jacobs > <janpieter.jac...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Hi Meino, > > > > I wouldn't worry too much about changing syntax; most of it remained the > > same, except for cosmetic changes (e.g. not using x. and y. for arguments > > names but x, y) and behind-the-scenes implementation aspects (faster, more > > special code, in-place operations). Those generally don't change much when > > programming. > > > > I liked Learning J a lot as well when learning, as well as JforC. I would > > just use those, and try out what you read, and check the release notes when > > things would not work out as expected, where non-backward compatible > > changes are flagged as incompatible changes. > > > > NuVoc is the de-facto documentation that should be up to date with the > > current implementation. > > > > That said, although recently a lot has been happening for J, in my opinion, > > most of the (reasonably recent) material remains valid. > > > > Good luck, > > > > Jan-Pieter > > > > On Mon, 4 Jul 2022, 14:45 , <tu...@posteo.de> wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > on the internet (some reddit post it was I think) I found a very nice > > > looking "Reference Card For J", which refers to J 602. > > > > > > There are some other tutorials, books and such, which are based on > > > previous > > > versions of J. > > > > > > At the current point of my knowledge about J (read: bloody newbie) I > > > cannot estimate, whether it makes sense to learn from such sources or > > > not - I want to avoid to "unlearn" things later. > > > > > > Especially this > > > https://www.learningj.com/book.htm#toc > > > book I like very muchm since it shows things the way I normally like to > > > learn new things. > > > > > > Question extracted from all these lengthy words is: > > > What way of evolving J does ? Adding more things and keeping > > > everything backward compatible (so I need only to add new things later) > > > or "super high dynamic" :) which means: Every day the syntax is totally > > > changed and verbs older than a month will be thrown out and replaced by > > > totally diffent verbs...and I have to unlearn everything in a 14 day > > > cycle... :) ;) 8) > > > (I exaggerate here just for fun! ) > > > > > > Cheers! > > > Meino > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
