> From: Dan Bron > I'm still of the opinion that our goal on RC should be evangelism -- > and I don't feel explicit code assists that effort.
I think that depends on the target audience of the evangelism. I imagine there are some who will look at a one-line, tacit J solution composed of primitives and be intrigued enough to devote the time required to work out what is going on, however I believe that those people are probably relatively few in number. The reaction of the majority (borne out by recent reactions on RC [1]) is something like: "Wow that's short, but it looks like unintelligible gobbledy gook to me. I wouldn't even know where to start trying to understand it ... Next!" (In some instances a number of J'ers may have a similar reaction!!!) The question for me is, if we go for a slightly more verbose style, that might be semi-comprehensible to a non-J'er, are we likely to drag in more potential users? We might need to go from answers that are 1/10 as long as others to only being 1/3 as long, but I think they will still "catch the eye". As long as the code blocks for separate implementations are well labelled (e.g. "=== Alternative short solution ===") then perhaps including both is an option that provides the best of both worlds? Another thing that will probably make a big difference to the attractiveness/readability of the J code on the site (and the J wiki) is providing syntax highlighting. I'd be willing to collaborate on such an effort. [snip] > But > I'm also willing to collaborate on a "house style" for J, which would > neccesarily entail building consensus regarding our goals on RC. > > To that end, I've created a page on RC to start that dicussion: > http://rosettacode.org/wiki//HouseStyle . If you have any ideas or > suggestions for the J community on RC, you can discuss it there. I've put up some initial suggestions for goals. [1] http://rosettacode.org/wiki/User_talk:Dkf#Your_discussion_about_J ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
