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> The result is a very solid language with some of the best tooling out there. Hard to take an article seriously when it makes this kind of claim about APL. >

> The result is a very solid language with some of the best tooling out there. Hard to take an article seriously when it makes this kind of claim about APL. > It turns out, OOP and software engineering are not the Godsends we thought them to be, particularly in the presence of rapid change. I don't know what the criterion is to be qualified as a "godsend", but the fact that an enormous majority of the code that powers our civilization today is OOP is a part of the answer that can't be waved off that easily. It doesn't mean it's the best possible approach, but it at least contradicts the claim about OOP not being adaptable to rapid change. And, really, claiming that APL is better at rapid change? A language that requires a specialized keyboard that's almost impossible to find these days? > We live in an international world full of non-English scripts. Source for this? As far as I can tell, most languages in existence and being created every day use English keywords. > APL is designed as executable math notation That is not true at all. Only a very tiny number of APL symbols are mathematical (and some even use these symbols wrong). Most of the APL alphabet is made of invented symbols. > Here again, APL has proven itself far ahead of the curve. The opposite. APL tried to experiment with brand new symbols for a programming language, which was a commendable attempt to innovate, but since no languages in existence today do the same, it's clearly an experiment that completely failed. The only reason why APL can still be considered not dead is that once a year, somebody posts the one liner Game of Life on a public forum and everybody marvels at it while being secretly happy APL never took off.

kick 6y ago
If you ignore that the tooling is proprietary, it is pretty great. Most people can't/won't (myself included), so it's a bit more dubious of a claim under that light.
Tistron 6y ago
I generally agree with your sentiment, but I feel that you are a bit uncharitable in your interpretation of what you are responding to. The way I read "We live in an international world full of non-English scripts" is that the scripts meant are not computer code but things like the cyrillic script or the devanagari script. I also read "executable math notation" not as meaning that it's a way of executing some specific other math notation (I don't think there really is a single standardised math notation) but a way of writing the specific executable math notation of APL.

kick 6y ago

If you ignore that the tooling is proprietary, it is pretty great. Most people can't/won't (myself included), so it's a bit more dubious of a claim under that light.

Tistron 6y ago

I generally agree with your sentiment, but I feel that you are a bit uncharitable in your interpretation of what you are responding to. The way I read "We live in an international world full of non-English scripts" is that the scripts meant are not computer code but things like the cyrillic script or the devanagari script. I also read "executable math notation" not as meaning that it's a way of executing some specific other math notation (I don't think there really is a single standardised math notation) but a way of writing the specific executable math notation of APL.