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To me it looks like one of the steepest learning curves I know: uncommon syntax, special characters, custom keyboard layout required, different dialects, ... A

To me it looks like one of the steepest learning curves I know: uncommon syntax, special characters, custom keyboard layout required, different dialects, ... And in the end, I wonder if it is more readable than regex which is sometimes considered 'write-only', because reading it can be so time consuming. I know you wrote about the readability topic, but I don't mean 'can I read it', but rather 'How much effort takes it to read it'.

rak1507 5y ago
I'd say there are two learning curves involved. The first is knowing what every symbol does. This sounds like it will be quite hard, but honestly probably takes less than a day. APL really doesn't have a lot of stuff to remember. It just looks a bit weird. The second learning curve however is the much harder part, learning how to write APL 'idiomatically'. This is mostly true in any language though, especially one in a different paradigm.
leephillips 5y ago
APL, among its other advantages, does have a steep learning curve: you can learn it very quickly.
foxfluff 5y ago
As someone who spent a few weekends learning APL: no, the learning curve is not that steep. The syntax is very simple, there's nothing scary about special characters if you can get over your fear of them, custom keyboard layout is absolutely not required (I've never used a custom layout for APL or Japanese or Cyrillic or Greek or any other non-latin characters that I type on a keyboard). Dialects are a thing but Dyalog is such an obvious choice if you want to learn APL that I wouldn't even worry about the rest. (K is worth looking into for its own sake but I don't consider it a dialect of APL; J might be a dialect worth exploring but so far it didn't impress me much and I found it much harder to read than APL). One more thing: I find that reading APL is easier than writing APL.
giardini 5y ago
arendtio says>"To me it looks like one of the steepest learning curves I know: uncommon syntax, special characters, custom keyboard layout required, different dialects, ..."< so, while a considerably smaller language, it's like learning Chinese (for someone who uses a Western alphabet)?

rak1507 5y ago

I'd say there are two learning curves involved. The first is knowing what every symbol does. This sounds like it will be quite hard, but honestly probably takes less than a day. APL really doesn't have a lot of stuff to remember. It just looks a bit weird. The second learning curve however is the much harder part, learning how to write APL 'idiomatically'. This is mostly true in any language though, especially one in a different paradigm.

leephillips 5y ago

APL, among its other advantages, does have a steep learning curve: you can learn it very quickly.

foxfluff 5y ago

As someone who spent a few weekends learning APL: no, the learning curve is not that steep. The syntax is very simple, there's nothing scary about special characters if you can get over your fear of them, custom keyboard layout is absolutely not required (I've never used a custom layout for APL or Japanese or Cyrillic or Greek or any other non-latin characters that I type on a keyboard). Dialects are a thing but Dyalog is such an obvious choice if you want to learn APL that I wouldn't even worry about the rest. (K is worth looking into for its own sake but I don't consider it a dialect of APL; J might be a dialect worth exploring but so far it didn't impress me much and I found it much harder to read than APL). One more thing: I find that reading APL is easier than writing APL.

giardini 5y ago

arendtio says>"To me it looks like one of the steepest learning curves I know: uncommon syntax, special characters, custom keyboard layout required, different dialects, ..."< so, while a considerably smaller language, it's like learning Chinese (for someone who uses a Western alphabet)?