4 ms·

APLcart – Find Your Way in APL

54 points by lelf 7y ago

imglorp 7y ago
APL aside, I really like this general presentation and ux of a cheat sheet. Dump out a table of a few thousand items, at most, and then narrow to relevant as the search box is filled. This would also work for APIs and CLI options, for example. I just wish the rows had some clickable elements leading to examples or maybe a live try it box in the case of an interpreted language.
- abrudz 7y ago
  Both links to documentation and examples are on my to-do list (https://github.com/abrudz/aplcart/issues https://github.com/abrudz/aplcart/issues).
geogra4 7y ago
I played around a bit with J as a language and found it really lovely but unfortunately not really applicable to my problem domain (CRUD Enterprise Apps) I guess maybe some people are really in love with the symbolic notation of APL (vs J) but I would think it would be terribly limiting.
- yiyus 7y ago
  Personally, I wish the APL ideas had been taken more seriously, not only as a programming language, but specially as an algebraic notation. I would like to be able to open any text editor and write formulas, and it is not a minor thing to be able to directly use those formulas to solve the problem in the computer. I can do that with J or K, but it does not feel natural at all when using paper or the blackboard, for example. On the other hand, I indeed love the APL symbols (you get used to them much faster than it may look) but, even although they are part of unicode, it is still much less convenient to use than ASCII.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago
    Would a special keyboard help that much?
    - boomlinde 7y ago
      A special keyboard at least puts you in a situation where you can fall back on hunting and pecking until you get used to where they are at your own pace. An IDE could help imprinting what the symbols actually mean.
      - abrudz 7y ago
        There are tricks to remember the locations (https://i.imgur.com/57wRuUS.png https://i.imgur.com/57wRuUS.png)
    - yiyus 7y ago
      A special keyboard can hardly compete with the convenience of any standard keyboard. My issue is not to write APL in a personal basis; there are many tools for that. My problem is that it is not the standard. J and K solved that using ASCII. That is a very reasonable solution for a programming language but ASCII symbols are not, in my opinion, good enough to replace our current mathematical symbols outside of the computer. For example, I like the symbol ⍟ for logarithm more than the log() function, but I do not see myself writing ^. in a piece of paper or a blackboard, neither can I imagine school kids learning about logarithms with ^. In my ideal world, APL symbols would be so ubiquitous as other arithmetic symbols are today, so they would be part of standard keyboards. Instead, I am stuck with a mixture of ugly code and mathematical formulas that I have to write by hand or using something like latex. Taking into account how powerful computers are, I find this very unfortunate.
  - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    (I'm not really familiar with the details of J, K, or APL) If either J or K is completely equivalent to APL, but uses words instead of symbols, then it might be possible to set up a program that replaces those words with the equivalent APL symbols. For this to work in any text editor, it would have to be a special keyboard/input, like how Japanese is spelled out in katakana and then converted to kanji. I'm not sure how hard that would be to set up. If a vim-only solution is good enough, then this could be accomplished using the "abbreviations" feature: http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/08.html http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/08.ht...
xvilka 7y ago
I suggested[1] for someone well-versed in APL to add it on the Learn X in Y minutes site to attract more beginners, allowing the quicker dive. So if someone wants to do that - feel free ;) [1] https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs/issues/3580 https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs/issues/358...
- abrudz 7y ago
  There's this (https://github.com/nooodl/learnxinyminutes-docs/blob/master/apl.apl https://github.com/nooodl/learnxinyminutes-docs/blob/master/...) fork.
jodrellblank 7y ago
Incidentally, in the last month or two, Dyalog have made their APL interpreter available for non-commercial use with no signup and no regular nagware popups when using it, and no disabled features, it’s a simple download of the current version just reminds you that it’s unlicensed when launched: https://www.dyalog.com/ https://www.dyalog.com/ (It used to be something you could ask for and exchange personal details for, if they agreed)

54 points by lelf 7y ago

APL aside, I really like this general presentation and ux of a cheat sheet. Dump out a table of a few thousand items, at most, and then narrow to relevant as the search box is filled. This would also work for APIs and CLI options, for example. I just wish the rows had some clickable elements leading to examples or maybe a live try it box in the case of an interpreted language.

abrudz 7y ago
Both links to documentation and examples are on my to-do list (https://github.com/abrudz/aplcart/issues https://github.com/abrudz/aplcart/issues).

geogra4 7y ago

I played around a bit with J as a language and found it really lovely but unfortunately not really applicable to my problem domain (CRUD Enterprise Apps) I guess maybe some people are really in love with the symbolic notation of APL (vs J) but I would think it would be terribly limiting.

yiyus 7y ago
Personally, I wish the APL ideas had been taken more seriously, not only as a programming language, but specially as an algebraic notation. I would like to be able to open any text editor and write formulas, and it is not a minor thing to be able to directly use those formulas to solve the problem in the computer. I can do that with J or K, but it does not feel natural at all when using paper or the blackboard, for example. On the other hand, I indeed love the APL symbols (you get used to them much faster than it may look) but, even although they are part of unicode, it is still much less convenient to use than ASCII.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago
  Would a special keyboard help that much?
  - boomlinde 7y ago
    A special keyboard at least puts you in a situation where you can fall back on hunting and pecking until you get used to where they are at your own pace. An IDE could help imprinting what the symbols actually mean.
    - abrudz 7y ago
      There are tricks to remember the locations (https://i.imgur.com/57wRuUS.png https://i.imgur.com/57wRuUS.png)
  - yiyus 7y ago
    A special keyboard can hardly compete with the convenience of any standard keyboard. My issue is not to write APL in a personal basis; there are many tools for that. My problem is that it is not the standard. J and K solved that using ASCII. That is a very reasonable solution for a programming language but ASCII symbols are not, in my opinion, good enough to replace our current mathematical symbols outside of the computer. For example, I like the symbol ⍟ for logarithm more than the log() function, but I do not see myself writing ^. in a piece of paper or a blackboard, neither can I imagine school kids learning about logarithms with ^. In my ideal world, APL symbols would be so ubiquitous as other arithmetic symbols are today, so they would be part of standard keyboards. Instead, I am stuck with a mixture of ugly code and mathematical formulas that I have to write by hand or using something like latex. Taking into account how powerful computers are, I find this very unfortunate.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  (I'm not really familiar with the details of J, K, or APL) If either J or K is completely equivalent to APL, but uses words instead of symbols, then it might be possible to set up a program that replaces those words with the equivalent APL symbols. For this to work in any text editor, it would have to be a special keyboard/input, like how Japanese is spelled out in katakana and then converted to kanji. I'm not sure how hard that would be to set up. If a vim-only solution is good enough, then this could be accomplished using the "abbreviations" feature: http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/08.html http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/08.ht...

xvilka 7y ago

I suggested[1] for someone well-versed in APL to add it on the Learn X in Y minutes site to attract more beginners, allowing the quicker dive. So if someone wants to do that - feel free ;) [1] https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs/issues/3580 https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs/issues/358...

abrudz 7y ago
There's this (https://github.com/nooodl/learnxinyminutes-docs/blob/master/apl.apl https://github.com/nooodl/learnxinyminutes-docs/blob/master/...) fork.

jodrellblank 7y ago

Incidentally, in the last month or two, Dyalog have made their APL interpreter available for non-commercial use with no signup and no regular nagware popups when using it, and no disabled features, it’s a simple download of the current version just reminds you that it’s unlicensed when launched: https://www.dyalog.com/ https://www.dyalog.com/ (It used to be something you could ask for and exchange personal details for, if they agreed)