Rather than an overt evangelism, it may work better to just write the "best" J code that you can, taking care to make it as easy for the reader as you can. This was the approach taking in the Project Euler problems. http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems Some new people have been motivated to learn J as a result. (After you've sweat blood for a few days solving a problem, you'd be highly motivated to find out why the solution in another language is so much shorter.)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sherlock, Ric" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, October 12, 2009 15:43 Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Rosetta Code goals (was Limit limitation) To: Programming forum <[email protected]> > > 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
