Oleg Kobchenko wrote:
When you try to match featues one-to-one with the
mainstream languages 3 : 0 may seem odd taken out
of the learning curve context.
However, J is not a conventional language.
And taking gradually from 2+2 you should be
able to appreciate the design choice of 3 : 0.
The design choice was also made in the context of a history.
Back in '93, there was J version 7 (now we have J release 5.04)
that had no control words: no if., no while.,
but there was "control suite", a modifiable
list of lines to be executed. Main interface was a dos text
window. In that era I remember (maybe correctly)
explicit functions being built
t=.'a=.^y.'
t=.t,:'b=.*x.'
t=.t,'a+b'
f=: '' : t
I think 3 : 0 arrived around '94
f=:3 : 0
:
a=.^y.
b=.*x.
a+b
)
looks swell and I have no trouble remembering 3 : 0
I am amazed that the design of 3 : 0 helped open the door
to the rich interface that Oleg described, and we
now enjoy.
Best,
Cliff
--
Clifford A. Reiter
Mathematics Department, Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042 USA, 610-330-5277
http://www.lafayette.edu/~reiterc
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