I had occasion to re-read Henry Rich's forward and intro in J for C Programmer's, and a couple thoughts struck me.
First off, I have experienced frequent crashes in J when I use external subsystems (like opengl). That probably was not the sort of thing Henry was thinking of when he wrote the forward, but still... Second, I have seen beginning J programmers with backgrounds from other languages struggle to express inherently serial algorithms in J. And yet, in "real life" I have often found that I can push back on the specifications -- a minor change in the "application" or "business" logic can often yield easy to implement specifications. Of course, sometimes you need to do something serially. And, sometimes you need C. Sometimes you even need assembly or machine language. But even when I am producing systems not intended for implementation in J (which is frequently), I find that approaching specifications with a "J mindset" can help. I imagine some of this was treated elsewhere in his book, but maybe not. (I do not have time to re-read the entire thing right now.) Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
