I don't see Iverson's intentions as relevant here. He may have wanted APL to be a tool of thought, but it wasn't really picked up as such. APL the computational

I don't see Iverson's intentions as relevant here. He may have wanted APL to be a tool of thought, but it wasn't really picked up as such. APL the computational tool, and its descendants, can claim some successes, but the "tool of thought" concept didn't gain traction for the vast majority of technical people. It's like if an important human rights document was written in Esperanto. The document might be indisputably important, while its language and the intentions behind it are an incidental historical detail.