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You shouldn't feel intimidated by their density. Both J and K are extremely approachable languages, but you need to try them an open mind and act as if you didn't know a thing about good coding practices. With time you will realize that only a tiny fraction of those apply to the APL language family.

Maybe that's the marketing ploy -- make anyone who learns it feel like a genius for learning it.

Have you had a look through the tutorial? Which parts of the tutorial made you feel as if you needed to be a genius to understand it?

Well, the part where it says:

> Arthur Whitney's k and its derivatives have served a small number of highly skilled programmers

Doesn't exactly start off with an inclusive tone.

As a k programmer myself I'd say to take that statement with a grain of salt and at least give the language a chance if you have some spare time. It's certainly true that the community is small and it's certainly true that there are plenty of really sharp programmers in the community but that doesn't mean that you need to be a genius to write k code.

It answers this question: if the language is so great and has been around for so long, why haven't we heard about it?