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We did J in university. I hated it. We also did assembly and I much ordered that instead

7thaccount 7y ago
I think I would also hate J, APL, Prolog, Haskell, Forth, or Lisp in University. The problem is that those languages require a completely different shift in software from the common imperative/OO style to something more declarative or in Lisp's case, just a bit different. In a typical university course, there isn't enough time to focus on learning those things and you stay so shallow with the material that the language seems useless. It seems like 1/2 of the Prolog subreddit is about homework assignments on things like list reversal. If you can already do that in Python/Java with a single method call, Prolog just seems like a really bizarre and inefficient method. Now once you take another step and see how it can figure out how to solve Sudoku without explicit instructions...that is cool. It's really the same thing with electrical engineering when the professor is trying to teach us microprocessors and assembly at the same time and it all seems like a waste when C is much easier. The assembly method probably teaches better, but I need more than just a few weeks to synthesize that information. Especially when you're getting slammed by other hard classes like differential equations at the same time. So perhaps you do hate J, then again, maybe you just need to learn it on your own schedule and not to answer arbitrary test questions about something you can already do in Java.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  I don't know how it is in J, but having fielded Lisp questions from students learning Lisp (usually 1/3 or 1/2 of a semester class on "Programming Languages" or "Functional Programming"), the assignments tend towards terrible questions, to the point where I don't think I could come up with questions that were better suited to making someone hate the language. People come out of a class that used Common Lisp thinking that Common Lisp lacks any looping construct (it has several). It looks like the professor took a SICP (which uses scheme, not common lisp) based class as an undergrad, never looked at any language in the lisp family again, and then 20 years later made up a syllabus using the half-remembered information using Common Lisp because they remember SICP had something to do with Lisp and taught it without actually trying to do any of the exercises.

I think I would also hate J, APL, Prolog, Haskell, Forth, or Lisp in University. The problem is that those languages require a completely different shift in software from the common imperative/OO style to something more declarative or in Lisp's case, just a bit different. In a typical university course, there isn't enough time to focus on learning those things and you stay so shallow with the material that the language seems useless. It seems like 1/2 of the Prolog subreddit is about homework assignments on things like list reversal. If you can already do that in Python/Java with a single method call, Prolog just seems like a really bizarre and inefficient method. Now once you take another step and see how it can figure out how to solve Sudoku without explicit instructions...that is cool. It's really the same thing with electrical engineering when the professor is trying to teach us microprocessors and assembly at the same time and it all seems like a waste when C is much easier. The assembly method probably teaches better, but I need more than just a few weeks to synthesize that information. Especially when you're getting slammed by other hard classes like differential equations at the same time. So perhaps you do hate J, then again, maybe you just need to learn it on your own schedule and not to answer arbitrary test questions about something you can already do in Java.

aidenn0 7y ago
I don't know how it is in J, but having fielded Lisp questions from students learning Lisp (usually 1/3 or 1/2 of a semester class on "Programming Languages" or "Functional Programming"), the assignments tend towards terrible questions, to the point where I don't think I could come up with questions that were better suited to making someone hate the language. People come out of a class that used Common Lisp thinking that Common Lisp lacks any looping construct (it has several). It looks like the professor took a SICP (which uses scheme, not common lisp) based class as an undergrad, never looked at any language in the lisp family again, and then 20 years later made up a syllabus using the half-remembered information using Common Lisp because they remember SICP had something to do with Lisp and taught it without actually trying to do any of the exercises.