At 14:21 -0700 2009/08/31, Roger Hui wrote: > > The best rejoinder I've heard to the referenced discussion is, >> "If I'm so smart, why don't you listen to what I'm telling you?" > >I recently saw that in a video of Dick Lathwell, who attributed >it Ken Iverson. > >Ken told me once about the "indefensible attack": >Yeah, it [APL] is easy for you; you guys are geniuses. >(What are we going to say? No, we are not geniuses? >No, it's not easy for us either? ...) > >Funny that he'd tell me about the attack but not the >defense, which would have been "If you think I am >so smart, why don't you follow my advice?".
I accept Dick's attribution, but my memory of it was as said by Dick himself in just such a discussion with the VSAPL/VSPC development group in Palo Alto c. 1975 -- I had to restrain myself to keep a business like appearance.... Looking back, the going's on around VSPC were quite amusing .... One "friend of APL" told a customer, (in Calgary) where IBM wanted to install VSPC, that Sharp APL might corrode the circuitry in their mainframe. (I'm not making this up!) - joey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
