4 ms·

Remember the Palm Pilot? Drawing the ASCII-ish symbols in the little box? While I did memorize the strokes, I never found the process efficient. I don't think t

Remember the Palm Pilot? Drawing the ASCII-ish symbols in the little box? While I did memorize the strokes, I never found the process efficient. I don't think that drawing APL runes would be any better -- certainly not better than the key-combos of Dyalog's bespoke APL editor (free for personal use, BTW).

qop 8y ago
Wow, actually I do remember that, and it sucked! So, I've never written apl, and I'm glad I read this comment because that's an excellent point you raise. To expand a bit, I was thinking about being able to notate computation graphically. That's really what I want. Visual programming has existed and has sucked forever, but those thoughts don't go away that there might be a way to do it, if I just had the missing piece. I need to sit down with dyalog and find out what I'm missing, it sounds like. Thanks!
- eigenspace 8y ago
  To be fair, ownning an iPad Pro, I can say first hand that the handwriting recognition possible with the stylus is actually quite remarkable and a great improvement from the old palm-pilot days.
  - qop 8y ago
    With that new interface, could you see yourself jotting down a "sentence" of APL that maybe you think of in a meeting or something? I mainly am interested in apl as a notation, there's a certain lispy zen to a language that unifies notation and code into the same thing. Maybe there are better handwriting notations to explore for what I'm thinking.
    - Sean1708 8y ago
      > With that new interface, could you see yourself jotting down a "sentence" of APL that maybe you think of in a meeting or something? If you've got an Android device you could give MyScript Calculator a go, if writing APL was as easy as writing equations on that app then it would be a lovely experience.
    - nickpeterson 8y ago
      https://www.sacrideo.us/paper-is-dead-long-live-paper-programming/ https://www.sacrideo.us/paper-is-dead-long-live-paper-progra... I think one thing to consider would be actually using paper. The terseness means you don't really pay a 'retyping' penalty.

qop 8y ago

Wow, actually I do remember that, and it sucked! So, I've never written apl, and I'm glad I read this comment because that's an excellent point you raise. To expand a bit, I was thinking about being able to notate computation graphically. That's really what I want. Visual programming has existed and has sucked forever, but those thoughts don't go away that there might be a way to do it, if I just had the missing piece. I need to sit down with dyalog and find out what I'm missing, it sounds like. Thanks!

eigenspace 8y ago
To be fair, ownning an iPad Pro, I can say first hand that the handwriting recognition possible with the stylus is actually quite remarkable and a great improvement from the old palm-pilot days.
- qop 8y ago
  With that new interface, could you see yourself jotting down a "sentence" of APL that maybe you think of in a meeting or something? I mainly am interested in apl as a notation, there's a certain lispy zen to a language that unifies notation and code into the same thing. Maybe there are better handwriting notations to explore for what I'm thinking.
  - Sean1708 8y ago
    > With that new interface, could you see yourself jotting down a "sentence" of APL that maybe you think of in a meeting or something? If you've got an Android device you could give MyScript Calculator a go, if writing APL was as easy as writing equations on that app then it would be a lovely experience.
  - nickpeterson 8y ago
    https://www.sacrideo.us/paper-is-dead-long-live-paper-programming/ https://www.sacrideo.us/paper-is-dead-long-live-paper-progra... I think one thing to consider would be actually using paper. The terseness means you don't really pay a 'retyping' penalty.