3 ms·

Arthur Whitney's short list comparison of J to Lisp/Scheme/Clojure

5 points by eggy 11y ago

Arthur Whitney recently published a short list of the commonalities between Lisp/Scheme/Clojure and the J programming language on his site [1]. Concise, but a nice comparison. I've always favored J and Lisp, and thought they were leagues apart, but this brings some perspective to bear on this for me. Lambda (λ) calculus vs. Lambda-mu (λμ)? I need to read up on it more. Arthur Whitney created the K programming language, and founded Kx systems, heavily used in finance, which is known for its ability to query very large datasets with very low latency. He also wrote the initial prototype for J, along with the collaboration of Ken Iverson and Roger Hui, which was a continuation of APL, originally created by Iverson. The initial stab at J was very terse C code with lots of macros [2] that has been on HN before [3]. [1] http://kx.com/q/lisp.txt [2] http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Incunabulum [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8533843

bladecatcher 11y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I've been a kdb+/q user for ~5 years. Yesterday, after coming across this, I went through the J Primer. It has some really powerful ideas in it (I didn't know Arthur was behind J as well!), and kdb+/q now feels like a distilled version of J. I've already started prototyping a small simulator using J. Thank you so much.
- eggy 11y ago
  I am an amateur J-er, but I can't stop jumping back to it and implementing something quick or re-implementing something I've done in another language. I am always surprised by how quick it is to prototype. I want to learn more how to use Qt to add GUIs to my projects, since unfortunately, only old-timers like myself like command lines. It doesn't get any buzz unless it has a nicely-designed GUI. Have you checked out JD? You can get an evaluation, non-commercial key to play with it. It should complement your kdb+/q background.
  - bladecatcher 11y ago
    JD looks very promising too for timeseries! I'm going to try it out one of these days.

5 points by eggy 11y ago

bladecatcher 11y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I've been a kdb+/q user for ~5 years. Yesterday, after coming across this, I went through the J Primer. It has some really powerful ideas in it (I didn't know Arthur was behind J as well!), and kdb+/q now feels like a distilled version of J. I've already started prototyping a small simulator using J. Thank you so much.

eggy 11y ago
I am an amateur J-er, but I can't stop jumping back to it and implementing something quick or re-implementing something I've done in another language. I am always surprised by how quick it is to prototype. I want to learn more how to use Qt to add GUIs to my projects, since unfortunately, only old-timers like myself like command lines. It doesn't get any buzz unless it has a nicely-designed GUI. Have you checked out JD? You can get an evaluation, non-commercial key to play with it. It should complement your kdb+/q background.
- bladecatcher 11y ago
  JD looks very promising too for timeseries! I'm going to try it out one of these days.