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Comment by 6thaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

PSA:

If you go to the author's root page, you can see they've written many fascinating books on niche subjects that aren't so niche on HN. For example, implementation of a lisp system and array programming, scheme books, logic programming stuff... etc. I haven't bought any yet (sadly), but plan to in the future as they seem to be optimized for the self learner who wants to learn via discussion and numerous simple examples rather than chapters full of dense mathematical theory. The array programming one looks a lot better than the Dyalog book and some of the J books I own or have flipped through.

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Thanks for the PSA! :)

I am basically writing the books that I would have liked to read while studying CS. So, yes, they are books for self-learners, from a guy who prefers to learn from textbooks.

No problem! I hope it helps get you a few sales.

I also sometimes wish I had all the time in the world to read through each one of them. Sadly as someone working full time with a kid, I have very little time for exploring these fascinating tidbits. I think one of the things I should really work on even better is time management of my free time. A little less Reddit and a little more studying would be good for me :).

I was curious if the Klong book just covered an intro to array programming in Klong, or if it also covered how you implemented it in C or your high level C like language?

I'd like to write my own array language someday and would likely use something like "D" that is low level enough to be fast and release as a binary while being high level enough not to blow my mind.

Best of luck on all your endeavors!

> I was curious if the Klong book just covered an intro to array programming in Klong, or if it also covered how you implemented it in C or your high level C like language?

The Klong book is just an introduction to array programming. The Klong compiler is a rather simple recursive descent parser emitting ad-hoc abstract machine code and the execuction model is basically some glue between the functions implementing the verbs of the language. I did not think that its implementation is particularly interesting and therefore did not cover it in the book.

I hope you find the time for your studies and implementing your own array language!

Ah, regardless it sounds useful and a good way to get up to speed on array programming concepts.

One of the problems I've always had with niche languages is that they're so alien compared to my background with scripting languages (Ex: Lisp, APL, Prolog, Forth, Smalltalk, Haskell...etc) and thus harder to figure out how to idiomatically do something.

Btw, there is a neat book for Prolog (black cover) on programming text adventures in Prolog. I found it was the only thing that made it start making sense to me as in how I can start to think in Prolog like I do Python. You might enjoy it as well, but you may be past it by now.

I'll have to check out your Klong code at some point. It might be a nice start for me. I think I know how to pass things around, but I'm sure there are pitfalls to get passed.

Forth might be a good subject for you to cover at some point further in the future too.

Thanks!!

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