8 ms·
I was at that meetup, and I do remember the Clojure crowd not being all that impressed. But it definitely came across that Arthur Whitney was a type of programm
by idoh 7y ago
I was at that meetup, and I do remember the Clojure crowd not being all that impressed. But it definitely came across that Arthur Whitney was a type of programming wizard. He had some offhand remark that he was running his laptop off of an OS he made with K, and was editing with an editor he made in K, but somehow what still working on getting a sound driver to work.
- kick 7y agokOS! Some of the people who helped work on that hang around news.YC! There's some pretty interesting stuff on it. The Impending kOS paper has probably introduced more people to APL and k than just about anything at this point. http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320 http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320
- RodgerTheGreat 7y agoIt was directly the reason I wrote oK. I wasn't satisfied with learning k4 when I knew that somewhere out there Arthur was tinkering with k5, and the only way to have it was to build it...
- wvlia5 7y agoThanks for doing it, I played with your code, and it was inspiring.
- 7thaccount 7y agoWhat are the big advancements between the major K versions?
- beagle3 7y agoK1 was never available outside of Morgan Stanley AFAIK, and I’ve never seen any docs of it. So ... APL -> A+ : opinionated (vector indices always start at 0, for example) and “electric” GUI (deserves a whole post to describe) A+ -> K2 : significantly simplified - only ascii, no multidimensional arrays (uses nested vectors instead), much smaller vocabulary but just as effective in the basics department (e.g. the Whitney where/replicate monastic operator replaces 6 or 7 APL operators), added simple dictionaries, workspaces, dropped a lot of math from language. Simpler electric GUI. Time and date native types (as floating point) K2 -> K3 mostly dropped GUI afaik. Added integral time and date. k3 -> K4/kdb+: simplifies language more, comprehensive dictionary, TSDB rolled deeply into language (was previously a product written in K), native 64 bit support. K4->K6: still more simplification, I think k6 is the kOS language. Never left dev state. K6->k7->k9: continuous simplification, now at shakti rather than kx/firstderivatives - and with much more community involvement.
- hu3 7y agoConcise! Thanks. If I were to explore K today, where do I start and what version would I pick?
- chrispsn 7y agoQ/KDB+ for something production ready now. k9 (Shakti) for a simpler product that's in the active language design phase and with not as much integrations - yet. ngn/k for an actively developed version that's free and targets k6-era (for now).
- nivertech 7y agoDoes either k9 (Shakti) or ngn/k have built-in timeseries database / qSQL[1], table / keyed table datatypes or something comparable? -- [1] qSQL is actually a DSL implemented in K on top of kdb functional queries
- chrispsn 7y agok9: yes to all.
- idoh 7y agoDoes anyone know pricing on k9? Like could a small software shop or bootstrapped business use it?
- chrispsn 7y agoI'm sure they'd be open to discussing that with you! Try Fintan: f@shakti.com
- beagle3 7y agoI see the one letter email is spreading..... I’m actually surprised Arthur can live with such a long and verbose email address - 12 whole letters is almost enough for him to write an music player or something.
- eternalban 7y agolooks like it was discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250401
- kick 7y agoThere have been a bunch of discussions on it, yeah. It's a fun subject!