> My point was that general programming usually looks more like writing the sorting algorithm than simply calling it. Thus, I would be more interested in seeing

> My point was that general programming usually looks more like writing the sorting algorithm than simply calling it. Thus, I would be more interested in seeing real examples of how the properties of J allow you to write algorithms more concisely or otherwise better. Ah - I see. Here[1] is quicksort in j. John scholes's videos are excellent and very illustrative, though they deal with apl rather than j; conway's game of life[2] and sudoku[3]. > The article showed how J solves some mathematical problems with built in functions or their built-in modifiers. But in general programming, you won't find a function that does exactly what you wanted, maybe with a little adverb. You'll usually have to write that function yourself, to describe how it works in terms of some of those pre-existing functions. Right. This is true, but you generally stay much closer to the builtins in j than you do in other language. > Note that your second example could be expressed as something like > x.OrderBy(y => y[1]) > In C#, assuming x is int[N][M]. I understand that J's version can work with many other shapes of X, but that is hard to appreciate without seeing example of how that comes in handy when writing some other (hopefully well known) algorithm. Right; you mentioned sort predicates, so I was giving an example of a way in which you could sort according to another relation. My point is: being able to change the layout of your data so easily can obviate sort predicates. (Though I do think a sort adverb taking a predicate would be cool.) 1. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Quicksort https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Quicksort 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmT80OseAGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmT80OseAGs