You're not too far off in my opinion. Yes, you can write beautiful code dealing with arrays, scalars, and matrices, but as you pointed out...it breaks down for

You're not too far off in my opinion. Yes, you can write beautiful code dealing with arrays, scalars, and matrices, but as you pointed out...it breaks down for other tasks. Opening files in J uses numeric handles that if I recall look something like this (5:!1) which is a little weird, but perhaps not hard once you learn it. It should be noted that Dyalog APL has easier to use primitives for CSV, JSON, SQl, and XML. It also has full interop with .NET on Windows including GUI. J also has GUI capabilities that people use, but it did not appear straightforward.