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Anyone using APL or J for work on HN? I've used it as a hobby and think it's really cool, but haven't ever used it professionally. Edit: this has been posted o

Anyone using APL or J for work on HN? I've used it as a hobby and think it's really cool, but haven't ever used it professionally. Edit: this has been posted on HN before.

gerikson 5y ago
Yes, on 3 May 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23055793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23055793 "Is APL Dead? Not anymore"
- mlochbaum 5y ago
  Believe it or not, the APL world's changed a lot since then. I still consider APL dead, but there are strong signs of rebirth. APL dialects April[0] and KAP[1] are improving rapidly, and my own offshoot BQN[2] has gone from prototype to a full language. All of these are open source and made to work with the Unix ecosystem. While the K language isn't as close to APL, ngn/k[3] is following a similar trajectory. This year we created a Discord/Matrix forum[4] (bridged together) for array languages, which has hundreds of members and a few conversations per day at the slowest. The Array Cast was featured prominently here when the first episode aired[5] and is also worthy of note: they say they now have thousands of subscribers. [0] https://github.com/phantomics/april https://github.com/phantomics/april [1] https://github.com/lokedhs/array https://github.com/lokedhs/array [2] https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/ https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/ [3] https://codeberg.org/ngn/k https://codeberg.org/ngn/k [4] https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/community/forums.html https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/community/forums.html [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27209093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27209093
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    Thanks for all you do! I can't wait until one of these languages reaches a 1.0 milestone.
lucozade 5y ago
I haven't written in APL professionally (other than fixing up existing code) but I have been responsible for an APL system and for its replacement. I'm sure that writing a greenfield APL program is a lot of fun. Initially. Or if you're just writing vignettes to do some temporary data wrangling then it's fine. As a language for writing applications that do proper work and need maintaining? Wouldn't be in my top 50 choices of language. And I don't think I've worked with 50 languages yet.
maest 5y ago
q and k are still actively used in many parts of finance.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  Yes, sorry for not mentioning that. I'm aware of kdb+ in finance (never used it personally, but wish I could).
- gbronner 5y ago
  Indeed, and if you have a community of people using them, you can be very productive. But those languages are astonishingly intimidating for new programmers -- reading from right to left, with implicit variables, different usage of brackets, types that are hard to discern, overloading of every possible bit of punctuation, etc makes it more like translating Latin than writing code. So while a line such as : .[`:/data/raw; (); :; 1001 1002 1003] is very succinct, the skill and concentration necessary to write that line is not something that lends itself to widespread adoption.
  - rak1507 5y ago
    I've been learning APL for a bit, and have tried q too, and I disagree with the idea you need more skill and concentration to write either. Personally, for problems that suit the domain, I've found it much easier than equivalents in other languages like numpy and pandas. Q-sql in particular seems extremely convenient to have built into a language, and probably requires less concentration to write than an equivalent using manual iteration/filtering.
agumonkey 5y ago
search for aaron hsu, he made plenty of talks about APL dialects if you like terse generic code you'll be fed for a while (too much even, Aaron's two page parser/compiler was somehow too cryptic even for my tastes :)
- aozgaa 5y ago
  He also wrote TFA.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  Ohh yeah. I've enjoyed talking with him on HN. Probably on a previous account as I never enter my email and get locked out all the time :) That parser was mind bending.
abrudz 5y ago
I do. But I don't really write or maintain large systems, only various tools and interfaces.
jpf0 5y ago
https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies
rscho 5y ago
I use J's Jd columnar database to munge data for academic research. Much, much easier than SQL. The models, I do in R because packages.
tangentstorm 5y ago
Does trying to build a Youtube channel around J count as professional? I've been livestreaming a presentation tool / time-travelling REPL for J for a few months now: https://github.com/tangentstorm/j-prez https://github.com/tangentstorm/j-prez It hasn't paid anything directly yet, but my videos probably helped me land my current job. At work, I use another APL-inspired language called K.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  For finance or something else?

Anyone using APL or J for work on HN? I've used it as a hobby and think it's really cool, but haven't ever used it professionally. Edit: this has been posted on HN before.

gerikson 5y ago

Yes, on 3 May 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23055793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23055793 "Is APL Dead? Not anymore"

mlochbaum 5y ago
Believe it or not, the APL world's changed a lot since then. I still consider APL dead, but there are strong signs of rebirth. APL dialects April[0] and KAP[1] are improving rapidly, and my own offshoot BQN[2] has gone from prototype to a full language. All of these are open source and made to work with the Unix ecosystem. While the K language isn't as close to APL, ngn/k[3] is following a similar trajectory. This year we created a Discord/Matrix forum[4] (bridged together) for array languages, which has hundreds of members and a few conversations per day at the slowest. The Array Cast was featured prominently here when the first episode aired[5] and is also worthy of note: they say they now have thousands of subscribers. [0] https://github.com/phantomics/april https://github.com/phantomics/april [1] https://github.com/lokedhs/array https://github.com/lokedhs/array [2] https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/ https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/ [3] https://codeberg.org/ngn/k https://codeberg.org/ngn/k [4] https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/community/forums.html https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/community/forums.html [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27209093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27209093
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  Thanks for all you do! I can't wait until one of these languages reaches a 1.0 milestone.

lucozade 5y ago

I haven't written in APL professionally (other than fixing up existing code) but I have been responsible for an APL system and for its replacement. I'm sure that writing a greenfield APL program is a lot of fun. Initially. Or if you're just writing vignettes to do some temporary data wrangling then it's fine. As a language for writing applications that do proper work and need maintaining? Wouldn't be in my top 50 choices of language. And I don't think I've worked with 50 languages yet.

maest 5y ago

q and k are still actively used in many parts of finance.

7thaccount 5y ago
Yes, sorry for not mentioning that. I'm aware of kdb+ in finance (never used it personally, but wish I could).
gbronner 5y ago
Indeed, and if you have a community of people using them, you can be very productive. But those languages are astonishingly intimidating for new programmers -- reading from right to left, with implicit variables, different usage of brackets, types that are hard to discern, overloading of every possible bit of punctuation, etc makes it more like translating Latin than writing code. So while a line such as : .[`:/data/raw; (); :; 1001 1002 1003] is very succinct, the skill and concentration necessary to write that line is not something that lends itself to widespread adoption.
- rak1507 5y ago
  I've been learning APL for a bit, and have tried q too, and I disagree with the idea you need more skill and concentration to write either. Personally, for problems that suit the domain, I've found it much easier than equivalents in other languages like numpy and pandas. Q-sql in particular seems extremely convenient to have built into a language, and probably requires less concentration to write than an equivalent using manual iteration/filtering.

agumonkey 5y ago

search for aaron hsu, he made plenty of talks about APL dialects if you like terse generic code you'll be fed for a while (too much even, Aaron's two page parser/compiler was somehow too cryptic even for my tastes :)

aozgaa 5y ago
He also wrote TFA.
7thaccount 5y ago
Ohh yeah. I've enjoyed talking with him on HN. Probably on a previous account as I never enter my email and get locked out all the time :) That parser was mind bending.

abrudz 5y ago

I do. But I don't really write or maintain large systems, only various tools and interfaces.

jpf0 5y ago

https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies

rscho 5y ago

I use J's Jd columnar database to munge data for academic research. Much, much easier than SQL. The models, I do in R because packages.

tangentstorm 5y ago

Does trying to build a Youtube channel around J count as professional? I've been livestreaming a presentation tool / time-travelling REPL for J for a few months now: https://github.com/tangentstorm/j-prez https://github.com/tangentstorm/j-prez It hasn't paid anything directly yet, but my videos probably helped me land my current job. At work, I use another APL-inspired language called K.

7thaccount 5y ago
For finance or something else?