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J (http://jsoftware.com/ http://jsoftware.com/) is also an option. It's not open source, either, but older versions of the source are available (j7, IIRC), and

J (http://jsoftware.com/ http://jsoftware.com/) is also an option. It's not open source, either, but older versions of the source are available (j7, IIRC), and there isn't a restriction on commercial use. I'm still trying to figure out the APL language family. I'd love to implement one, eventually, but it's a ways off. (I've done a toy interpreter already, but that was just to make sense of some basics.)

BMarkmann 16y ago
For anyone not familiar with the APL family of languages, prepare to have your mind blown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 Terse, cryptic, powerful. It's like doing magic tricks with code. (Not that that's a recipe for maintainable software, but that's an entirely different debate.) There's also (meant to mention this before) A+, which is GPL, I believe: http://www.aplusdev.org/ http://www.aplusdev.org/
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  I spent most of a Saturday morning picking apart the prototype J interpreter (http://www.nsl.com/papers/origins.htm http://www.nsl.com/papers/origins.htm) with GDB, which convinced me there was something deep there. I've read most of _J for C Programmers_, and, this week, I also got _APL: An Interactive Approach_. The mindset is starting to make a lot of sense. (I've also looked at A+, but I'd rather stick to the ASCII variants.)
  - chl 16y ago
    A+ has an ASCII mode, activate w/: $mode ascii For a mapping between ASCII tokens and APL glyphs, see: - http://www.vector.org.uk/aflat/tutor/index.htm http://www.vector.org.uk/aflat/tutor/index.htm - http://www.aplusdev.org/APlusRefV2_15.html#HEADING349 http://www.aplusdev.org/APlusRefV2_15.html#HEADING349
    - silentbicycle 16y ago
      Good to know, thanks. I will give A+ another look. Having read more about APL, though, I'm feeling less inclined to write off the extended character setup. Still, it's an issue one needs to sort out upfront. I guess it's the APL equivalent of bitching about parenthesis, when either is a shallow detail compared to what's really novel about the languages. Many languages seem to have shibboleth complaints, to show when people haven't made it past the surface - Lua indexes from 1, Lisp has the parens, Python has the whitespace, etc. Maybe there's a community value in that, I don't know.

BMarkmann 16y ago

For anyone not familiar with the APL family of languages, prepare to have your mind blown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 Terse, cryptic, powerful. It's like doing magic tricks with code. (Not that that's a recipe for maintainable software, but that's an entirely different debate.) There's also (meant to mention this before) A+, which is GPL, I believe: http://www.aplusdev.org/ http://www.aplusdev.org/

silentbicycle 16y ago
I spent most of a Saturday morning picking apart the prototype J interpreter (http://www.nsl.com/papers/origins.htm http://www.nsl.com/papers/origins.htm) with GDB, which convinced me there was something deep there. I've read most of _J for C Programmers_, and, this week, I also got _APL: An Interactive Approach_. The mindset is starting to make a lot of sense. (I've also looked at A+, but I'd rather stick to the ASCII variants.)
- chl 16y ago
  A+ has an ASCII mode, activate w/: $mode ascii For a mapping between ASCII tokens and APL glyphs, see: - http://www.vector.org.uk/aflat/tutor/index.htm http://www.vector.org.uk/aflat/tutor/index.htm - http://www.aplusdev.org/APlusRefV2_15.html#HEADING349 http://www.aplusdev.org/APlusRefV2_15.html#HEADING349
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    Good to know, thanks. I will give A+ another look. Having read more about APL, though, I'm feeling less inclined to write off the extended character setup. Still, it's an issue one needs to sort out upfront. I guess it's the APL equivalent of bitching about parenthesis, when either is a shallow detail compared to what's really novel about the languages. Many languages seem to have shibboleth complaints, to show when people haven't made it past the surface - Lua indexes from 1, Lisp has the parens, Python has the whitespace, etc. Maybe there's a community value in that, I don't know.