I chose ‘o’ to denote @: for coding long time ago because (at least for me) it is compact, less distracting (while glancing at a paragraph), it was a familiar symbol to express composition of functions ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_composition and http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Composition.html ) and it is similar to @ in appearance (which I suspect it is not accidental).
I have used it particularly in some of my contributions to the Rosetta Code hoping that readers with some mathematical background would also find it easy to process mentally and I am glad to know that Tracy finds it appealing as well. ________________________________ From: "Sherlock, Ric" <r.g.sherl...@massey.ac.nz> To: Programming forum <programming@jsoftware.com> Sent: Sat, November 21, 2009 11:57:03 PM Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] On a curious property of 3435 > From: Tracy Harms > > I phrased the tacit definition with an awareness that most of my > readers do not know J, and with the hope of keeping as much emphasis > as possible on the summation and reflexive exponentiation that > dominate this interesting pattern. > > JMQ introduced me to the use of lower-case o as synonym for @: and I'm > liking it a good deal. Like you, Ric, I still find @: easier to parse, > but the aesthetics of the 'o' seem worth the layer of indirection for > many occasions. Yes I get that the idea was to try and make the solution look less like a random sequence of punctuation for non-Jers. Like any type of communication, it is important to know your audience and your message, and adapt your style of communication to suit. The questioner was asking whether the J sentence was readily comprehensible and clear to someone who knew J. It seems to me that this is another case where the answer is: "Absolutely! In the same way as someone who knows Arabic/Chinese/Maths symbols/[insert symbol set here] finds it easy to read a sentence using that script." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
