5 ms·

Dyalog APL 16.0

65 points by sndean 9y ago

jxy 9y ago
I like it that they are adding more and more functionalities from J, probably because Roger Hui is involved in this. The namespace system in Dyalog APL works far better than J's locale, IMHO. The only problem is that you can't get the source code. Look around, in this 21st century, how many interpreters are still closed sourced? I really worry about their long term survivability.
- sndean 9y ago
  > I really worry about their long term survivability. Me too. It's a relief that GNU APL has become a viable alternative, in case Dyalog goes under.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Do you use GNU APL? I talked to the maintainer once, but not aware of its speed and maturity.
    - sndean 9y ago
      I've only used it enough to see that majority of the code I write in Dyalog APL will run there as well. Perhaps I should start in GNU APL in the first place, but Dyalog's environment is just nicer
      - throwaway7645 9y ago
        Yea, good point. The libraries appear to be fairly good at least (ODBC, DDE, plots, R interface...etc).
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Closed source is less of a problem for me than the draconian licensing. Paying such steep costs to use in production is a no go for me. I could afford the $1500 personal productivity tool fee for just myself, but then none of my coworkers can use anything I write which probably doesn't help advertising. I really like the symbols more than J, but J ends up being more practical for me. I think if array langs are to take off, kx systems would have to make their software free and just charge for support, but I doubt they'll do that with how much money they're making.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I still don't get the companies that cannot take the lessons of Smalltalk vendors. It's no accident Borland could sell product and Smalltalk vendors died off with developer and deployment fees. I still think there is a place for paid tools, but more JetBrain / old Borland then ParcPlace.
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      Yea. Ain't nobody wanna pay a deployment fee. Visual Studio charges for the IDE as I understand it which you don't even have to use.
rebootthesystem 9y ago
I love APL, used it professionally for about a decade. I hate the APL ecosystem.
- nickpeterson 9y ago
  That seems to be about right. I really wish there was a decently maintained, open source, apl derivative with the source on GitHub. The nearest I could find was Kona but it looks like that has pretty minimal activity. It seems like anyone with the ability to make this a reality just creates a new variants , closes the source, and charges for the tooling (like Kerf).
eggy 9y ago
I really like Dyalog. I paid for the personal license before they made it free, but then when I thought about developing things for fun, and possibly commercial reasons, the licensing put me off. I still play with Dyalog, but J is the better fit for my needs right now. I am glad Roger Hui is on board, and I hope it does the same thing J did, and open source the code. I have a fondness for the characters in APL for no real objective reason. Maybe my love of symbols to make things concise and in one eyeful.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Yea, I use a lot of symbols in my emails (obviously nothing like APL), but enough for me to realize I like that kind of notation.
pvitz 9y ago
On a side note, the latest J 806 beta finally includes support for AVX. Let's see how this will impact the performance.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  I skimmed the Wikipedia article on AVX, but have no clue what it means. Care to go into a little more detail? Targeting the additional instructions will slow things down you think?
  - brutos 9y ago
    AVX are vector instructions. They work on wide register (256bit) where you can stuff 8 32bit floats (or in later versions ints) or 4 (double, or longs not sure if AVX2 or later has support for that), or 16 chars (AVX2 iirc). APL, as an array language, should, in theory at least, especially profit from automatic vectorization by the compiler. If the auto-vectorization works well, you get get a 4-16x speed-up for free (if you don't have data dependencies).
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      Well that sounds amazing!

65 points by sndean 9y ago

jxy 9y ago

I like it that they are adding more and more functionalities from J, probably because Roger Hui is involved in this. The namespace system in Dyalog APL works far better than J's locale, IMHO. The only problem is that you can't get the source code. Look around, in this 21st century, how many interpreters are still closed sourced? I really worry about their long term survivability.

sndean 9y ago
> I really worry about their long term survivability. Me too. It's a relief that GNU APL has become a viable alternative, in case Dyalog goes under.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Do you use GNU APL? I talked to the maintainer once, but not aware of its speed and maturity.
  - sndean 9y ago
    I've only used it enough to see that majority of the code I write in Dyalog APL will run there as well. Perhaps I should start in GNU APL in the first place, but Dyalog's environment is just nicer
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      Yea, good point. The libraries appear to be fairly good at least (ODBC, DDE, plots, R interface...etc).
throwaway7645 9y ago
Closed source is less of a problem for me than the draconian licensing. Paying such steep costs to use in production is a no go for me. I could afford the $1500 personal productivity tool fee for just myself, but then none of my coworkers can use anything I write which probably doesn't help advertising. I really like the symbols more than J, but J ends up being more practical for me. I think if array langs are to take off, kx systems would have to make their software free and just charge for support, but I doubt they'll do that with how much money they're making.
- protomyth 9y ago
  I still don't get the companies that cannot take the lessons of Smalltalk vendors. It's no accident Borland could sell product and Smalltalk vendors died off with developer and deployment fees. I still think there is a place for paid tools, but more JetBrain / old Borland then ParcPlace.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Yea. Ain't nobody wanna pay a deployment fee. Visual Studio charges for the IDE as I understand it which you don't even have to use.

rebootthesystem 9y ago

I love APL, used it professionally for about a decade. I hate the APL ecosystem.

nickpeterson 9y ago
That seems to be about right. I really wish there was a decently maintained, open source, apl derivative with the source on GitHub. The nearest I could find was Kona but it looks like that has pretty minimal activity. It seems like anyone with the ability to make this a reality just creates a new variants , closes the source, and charges for the tooling (like Kerf).

eggy 9y ago

I really like Dyalog. I paid for the personal license before they made it free, but then when I thought about developing things for fun, and possibly commercial reasons, the licensing put me off. I still play with Dyalog, but J is the better fit for my needs right now. I am glad Roger Hui is on board, and I hope it does the same thing J did, and open source the code. I have a fondness for the characters in APL for no real objective reason. Maybe my love of symbols to make things concise and in one eyeful.

throwaway7645 9y ago
Yea, I use a lot of symbols in my emails (obviously nothing like APL), but enough for me to realize I like that kind of notation.

pvitz 9y ago

On a side note, the latest J 806 beta finally includes support for AVX. Let's see how this will impact the performance.

throwaway7645 9y ago
I skimmed the Wikipedia article on AVX, but have no clue what it means. Care to go into a little more detail? Targeting the additional instructions will slow things down you think?
- brutos 9y ago
  AVX are vector instructions. They work on wide register (256bit) where you can stuff 8 32bit floats (or in later versions ints) or 4 (double, or longs not sure if AVX2 or later has support for that), or 16 chars (AVX2 iirc). APL, as an array language, should, in theory at least, especially profit from automatic vectorization by the compiler. If the auto-vectorization works well, you get get a 4-16x speed-up for free (if you don't have data dependencies).
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Well that sounds amazing!