3 ms·

I program in K, a close relative, and I have done some tinkering with APL. The symbols actually don't take long to memorize- perhaps a few days of practice. It'

I program in K, a close relative, and I have done some tinkering with APL. The symbols actually don't take long to memorize- perhaps a few days of practice. It's a bit like learning to read prose. At first you have to sound out words letter by letter, but eventually you're able to "see" words and phrases built out of common patterns of symbols. I see ,/f' and think flatmap, ~~': and think heads of uniform runs, {x@<x} and think sort up, etc. A dense expression can still take a while to puzzle out sometimes, but certainly no longer than the equivalent logic spelled out in a more verbose language across many lines.

willhslade 10y ago
What's it like looking for a K job?
- RodgerTheGreat 10y ago
  In my experience, if you do enough open source stuff with K, jobs find you.
35bge57dtjku 10y ago
I've looked at some of the ascii APL relatives, and my impression was that they are probably great for working with numbers, but seem like they'd be bad for working with text and other things. Am I missing something here?
- RodgerTheGreat 10y ago
  K relaxes the traditional APL constraints on "rectangular data", which makes it comparatively quite good at dealing with text manipulation. I frequently use K for working with text and it works nicely. Anything you can represent as a list structure can have all the traditional APL-ish tools brought to bear on it. As for "other things", here are a few K sketches I've written recently: - generate random island shorelines: http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=629a86c2577401b385abb3a72beb108c http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=629a86c257... - animated holiday card: http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=e5fdbb8724a0d3a4c69dd08d335a6feb http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=e5fdbb8724... - an implementation of the arcade game "Snake": http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=ead275c52940fd601763df2dbf6c01cf http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=ead275c529... And that's just me! There are many interesting examples and essays here: http://www.nsl.com http://www.nsl.com

willhslade 10y ago

What's it like looking for a K job?

RodgerTheGreat 10y ago
In my experience, if you do enough open source stuff with K, jobs find you.

35bge57dtjku 10y ago

I've looked at some of the ascii APL relatives, and my impression was that they are probably great for working with numbers, but seem like they'd be bad for working with text and other things. Am I missing something here?

RodgerTheGreat 10y ago
K relaxes the traditional APL constraints on "rectangular data", which makes it comparatively quite good at dealing with text manipulation. I frequently use K for working with text and it works nicely. Anything you can represent as a list structure can have all the traditional APL-ish tools brought to bear on it. As for "other things", here are a few K sketches I've written recently: - generate random island shorelines: http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=629a86c2577401b385abb3a72beb108c http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=629a86c257... - animated holiday card: http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=e5fdbb8724a0d3a4c69dd08d335a6feb http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=e5fdbb8724... - an implementation of the arcade game "Snake": http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=ead275c52940fd601763df2dbf6c01cf http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/ike/ike.html?gist=ead275c529... And that's just me! There are many interesting examples and essays here: http://www.nsl.com http://www.nsl.com