TIL APL...neat! Found this for others who want to play along.
(Note: took a while but the special characters for producing lists, etc... are from "virtual keys" you can see at the very top of the web page)
(Note: took a while but the special characters for producing lists, etc... are from "virtual keys" you can see at the very top of the web page)
Did you ever switch to R? If so, how would you describe the two languages to a non-programmer?
J is like an old school text adventure where you start with a blank screen that reads "You are in the woods" and, before you know it, it's Monday morning and you're considering calling out of work because you've almost decoded some elvish runes you found on a rock.
R is the single player campaign of a modern first person shooter, where you have infinite lives and your health regenerates if you sit and think for a while.
This isn't a perfect analogy. Maybe J is high school Spanish class, and R is Google translate? I remember enjoying J as a language and R as a tool. It's exciting to express new things in J. It's easy to do familiar things in R.
R also is really well documented - there was a time where experts were asking basic questions on Stack Overflow and answering them themselves, because that's where people look for documentation.
It's pretty damn good!
So I can see him thinking he has the correct language.
(it expects the U+2373 ⍳ 'APL iota', which isn't anywhere as easy to type)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard#/media/Fi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#His...