6 ms·

APL Since 1978 [pdf]

69 points by 7thaccount 6y ago

7thaccount 6y ago
Here's a recent publication from Morten Kromberg and Roger Hui.
rightbyte 6y ago
It is interesting to see what could have been programming. I guess terminal monitors killed APL?
- Jhsto 6y ago
  More like Excel killed APL. APL was mainly used by "domain experts", i.e., people who were not software engineers. According to Dyalog's YouTube videos, APL is still there for these people who started doing spreadsheets way before anything like Excel was available.
  - moonchild 6y ago
    And now they've come full circle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEG9pFNYBCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEG9pFNYBCI
  - smabie 6y ago
    APL might not be super popular, but array languages are widely used in data heavy industries.
  - kick 6y ago
    This isn't true and was never true; currently don't have time to point out why it's not true but I will get to it as soon as possible.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    Accounting and planning people, who use Excel today, were never APL users. APL was popular in the operations research community, and those people are now mostly R users (but they left APL to SAS, Stata, S/S+ and a few others through the years, before adopting R)
JadeNB 6y ago
This is part of the open-access Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, so it would be available anyway; but just a reminder that the entire ACM DL is available free to download until June 30: https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-during-covid-19 https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-... . Incidentally, the issue from which this comes is called "No. HOPL": https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2020/4/HOPL https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2020/4/HOPL. I'm not sure if it's in place of, or in addition to, HOPL IV which was postponed: https://hopl4.sigplan.org https://hopl4.sigplan.org .
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Downloading PDF from ACM requires cookies. Downloading PDF from Archive.org does not require cookies. https://web.archive.org/web/20200612214124if_/https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386319 https://web.archive.org/web/20200612214124if_/https://dl.acm...
chmaynard 6y ago
Is it just me? I hate the ACM website. Ugly and difficult to use.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
anonu 6y ago
Shakti, with roots in apl, seems to embody the latest cutting edge concepts
- the_optimist 6y ago
  Say more, please.
- moonchild 6y ago
  That remains unclear. Similar to q/k4/kdb, it's optimized for fin-tech database work; that is, operations on very long columns. Apl (esp. dyalog) and j have proper multidimensional arrays, which means that e.g. matrix ops are practical/easier. They also have better tacit programming support.
  - smabie 6y ago
    What's the difference between nested lists and full multidimensional array support? It's not like q is bad at multiplying matrices.
    - robberbarron 6y ago
      For a multidimensional array: a matrix will be in stored single vector with metadata showing dimension. The presentation of the matrix (view) will then not matter on the data contained therein. For q, they are stored as lists of lists, which can mean that their memory is not contiguous. Some algorithms can slow down significantly as a result (eg dense), others might speed up (eg sparse) However, there are libs in q such as qml which interface with LAPACK and are doing memory mapping so it is not entirely q, just an interface to a C implementation http://althenia.net/qml http://althenia.net/qml
      - moonchild 6y ago
        I had not seen qml. I must say, an array language interface to another language's math library is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
gregfjohnson 6y ago
It is interesting to speculate about how a technology affected the zeitgeist, and directly or indirectly influenced subsequent work. My first programming language was APL, and it profoundly influenced how I think about programming. Lately I have been using numpy, and it feels awfully familiar to me! The authors of numpy acknowledge the influence of the APL/J school of thought on numpy. Have other people noticed the deep similarities between numpy and APL? (I will admit, words attributed to C.A.R. Hoare about Algol 60 have come to mind frequently: "Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.")
- theamk 6y ago
  Have you seen matlab/octave? It appeared in 1984, quite a bit earlier than numpy, and is atill widely used today, introducing a large number of people to the wonders of array programming.

69 points by 7thaccount 6y ago

7thaccount 6y ago

Here's a recent publication from Morten Kromberg and Roger Hui.

rightbyte 6y ago

It is interesting to see what could have been programming. I guess terminal monitors killed APL?

Jhsto 6y ago
More like Excel killed APL. APL was mainly used by "domain experts", i.e., people who were not software engineers. According to Dyalog's YouTube videos, APL is still there for these people who started doing spreadsheets way before anything like Excel was available.
- moonchild 6y ago
  And now they've come full circle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEG9pFNYBCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEG9pFNYBCI
- smabie 6y ago
  APL might not be super popular, but array languages are widely used in data heavy industries.
- kick 6y ago
  This isn't true and was never true; currently don't have time to point out why it's not true but I will get to it as soon as possible.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Accounting and planning people, who use Excel today, were never APL users. APL was popular in the operations research community, and those people are now mostly R users (but they left APL to SAS, Stata, S/S+ and a few others through the years, before adopting R)

JadeNB 6y ago

This is part of the open-access Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, so it would be available anyway; but just a reminder that the entire ACM DL is available free to download until June 30: https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-during-covid-19 https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-... . Incidentally, the issue from which this comes is called "No. HOPL": https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2020/4/HOPL https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2020/4/HOPL. I'm not sure if it's in place of, or in addition to, HOPL IV which was postponed: https://hopl4.sigplan.org https://hopl4.sigplan.org .

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

Downloading PDF from ACM requires cookies. Downloading PDF from Archive.org does not require cookies. https://web.archive.org/web/20200612214124if_/https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386319 https://web.archive.org/web/20200612214124if_/https://dl.acm...

chmaynard 6y ago

Is it just me? I hate the ACM website. Ugly and difficult to use.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

anonu 6y ago

Shakti, with roots in apl, seems to embody the latest cutting edge concepts

the_optimist 6y ago
Say more, please.
moonchild 6y ago
That remains unclear. Similar to q/k4/kdb, it's optimized for fin-tech database work; that is, operations on very long columns. Apl (esp. dyalog) and j have proper multidimensional arrays, which means that e.g. matrix ops are practical/easier. They also have better tacit programming support.
- smabie 6y ago
  What's the difference between nested lists and full multidimensional array support? It's not like q is bad at multiplying matrices.
  - robberbarron 6y ago
    For a multidimensional array: a matrix will be in stored single vector with metadata showing dimension. The presentation of the matrix (view) will then not matter on the data contained therein. For q, they are stored as lists of lists, which can mean that their memory is not contiguous. Some algorithms can slow down significantly as a result (eg dense), others might speed up (eg sparse) However, there are libs in q such as qml which interface with LAPACK and are doing memory mapping so it is not entirely q, just an interface to a C implementation http://althenia.net/qml http://althenia.net/qml
    - moonchild 6y ago
      I had not seen qml. I must say, an array language interface to another language's math library is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

gregfjohnson 6y ago

It is interesting to speculate about how a technology affected the zeitgeist, and directly or indirectly influenced subsequent work. My first programming language was APL, and it profoundly influenced how I think about programming. Lately I have been using numpy, and it feels awfully familiar to me! The authors of numpy acknowledge the influence of the APL/J school of thought on numpy. Have other people noticed the deep similarities between numpy and APL? (I will admit, words attributed to C.A.R. Hoare about Algol 60 have come to mind frequently: "Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.")

theamk 6y ago
Have you seen matlab/octave? It appeared in 1984, quite a bit earlier than numpy, and is atill widely used today, introducing a large number of people to the wonders of array programming.