High level languages succeed by exposing the components of computation as combinators one can manipulate like algebra. I was given access to an APL terminal as

High level languages succeed by exposing the components of computation as combinators one can manipulate like algebra. I was given access to an APL terminal as a 19 year old math major familiar with punching cards (first with a paperclip). The experience was like taking acid, and I have never replicated it since. The notation is a red herring, like parentheses in Lisp. APL succeeds by intensively plumbing an extraordinarily limited domain of multidimensional arrays. It conquered a much wider scope because distance from a problem is countered by the intensity of the light; compare the sun to a flashlight in your hand. And the limited domain allowed the combinators to reach critical mass, like the fusion fueling the sun. APL was intended for mathematicians, who are used to fitting the tools that they have to a problem. Since APL, we have never accepted general purpose languages built on such a limited scope, making it that much harder for our combinators to achieve critical mass. At 64 I daydream at what could have been, stunned that computer languages haven't developed further by now. I've chased the promise here in every Lisp, finding experiences lost in other languages but the promise ultimately elusive. Haskell comes closest to a practical language realizing my early soaring with APL; one experiences a fluid algebra of combinators even as other aspects are as calcified and off-limits to manipulation as C. At their best, the parser combinators of functional languages are indistinguishable from the notation in one's mind for parsing. Most programmers see clumsy parsing in college and never master the idea. If one could imagine a world where all programmers are fluent in parsing, a suitable domain for a language could be the application of parser combinators to strongly typed trees. One gains the critical mass advantages of an APL limited domain, but with a domain better suited to modern computer science. In particular, one could achieve the homoiconicity of Lisp, with the hope of better macro tools. Ever stare in amazement that all life on earth developed from the same impoverished code base? Now look at how all macro systems resemble each other. Is that really the best civilization can do, if we had a million runs of the simulation?