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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

PDF of the lecture: https://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.p...

I found this part remarkable:

> The executable language to be used is APL, a general-purpose language which originated in an attempt to provide clear and precise expression in writing and teaching, and which was implemented as a programming language only after several years of use and development.

This is also how Python started out! I always thought, "Python is so easy for beginners because it is a teaching language." Well, so is APL!

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I think there’s a fundamental difference between those two cases. Python was envisioned as a programming language that is easy to teach; APL was envisioned as a language that aids in teaching, not as a programming language (reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language), APL was started in 1957, with the first work on implementing it as a computer language only starting in 1962)

Lisp is similar to APL in that sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)#Hi...:

“Steve Russell said, look, why don't I program this eval… and I said to him, ho, ho, you're confusing theory with practice, this eval is intended for reading, not for computing. But he went ahead and did it. That is, he compiled the eval in my paper into IBM 704 machine code, fixing bugs, and then advertised this as a Lisp interpreter, which it certainly was. So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has today”

Yes, and I think it's important to highlight that Iverson would write APL on chalkboards and paper when working on math at times. I am sure some people here can hand write a program, but it seems so much more akin to writing math. I am in J daily, APL once in a while, Uiua more frequently, but J is the only one I actually write in my journal and then try it on my J phone app or when I open up my laptop. The intro books for J are great for working through math and learning J - Concrete Math for Computing in J; Easy J; Calculus; Arithmetic - https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Books

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