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Comment by semiquaver | Hacker News Reader

What does [APL] even mean?

an obscure but very powerful matrix-centered programming language usually considered to be "write only", as in impossible to read what someone else wrote.

> usually considered to be "write only"

Only by the ignorant and uninitiated.

I’m sure you’re fun to work with

I am!

Im sure _you're_ fun to work with. Get a sense of humor.

> as in impossible to read what someone else wrote.

Can you even read what you wrote several years ago?

Wait, isn't that what they say about perl?

Yes, perl is considered write-only because it is a mess of features that allow unhygienic programming habits to flourish - it is full of hard-to-trace magical behavior. Completely different than APL, which has had perl's write-only label applied to it by programmers not used to reading terse mathematical notation.

They say the same about RegEx too.

40 years ago (at school) I generally wrote in ink - edged and straight nibs, blue and black ink because I liked it. I learned several formal styles as well as my idiosyncratic efforts. I did have biros and fibre tips etc available. I had loads of choice. My parent's generation was probably the last of the ink and nib first users.

Very much not.

Its origin is as a mathematical notation for algorithms. It was used to publish research reports and (IIRC) a book or two.

You're confusing "possible to read" with "accessible to people unwilling to invest any effort understanding"

Find the "write only" comments you commonly see online to be untrue. I have been writing a voxel game in majority APL code for the past 6 months. I have been able to read my own code and refactor stuff I've written months ago fine while also integrating code from other APL codebases and suggestions from other people. It just has a higher learning curve to understand.

"a programming language".

Not to be confused with b programming language, which is not its succesor, but is the predecessor to c.

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