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It's too bad APL never enjoyed ubiquity on Unix-like platforms. The world would have been a better place. Maybe if Stallman or some early GNU participant had ch

by wahern 5y ago

It's too bad APL never enjoyed ubiquity on Unix-like platforms. The world would have been a better place. Maybe if Stallman or some early GNU participant had championed APL we'd all be either using APL or constantly excusing ourselves. Like Emacs did for Lisp. I'm decent with sed. I wouldn't call myself an expert, but know how to employ addressing and hold spaces, which are sadly aracana to most people who employ sed. I ended up learning sed because it was there, proved useful, and it fit into the command-line toolkit really well. (In order of importance.) APL would never slot into that toolkit as well as other tools, but it's value-add would more than compensate. Unfortunately, the value-add isn't enough to compensate for the fact that it's not there and in your face every time you're exploring a problem and its solution space.

jolmg 5y ago
> Maybe if Stallman or some early GNU participant had championed APL we'd all be either using APL or constantly excusing ourselves. I think the major issue is that APL seems to require more than ASCII to work it.
- wahern 5y ago
  AFAIU APL implementations very early on supported ASCII equivalents. But maybe it was too late to either disabuse people of the notion that it required non-ASCII, or the convention proved too strong to overcome.
- voldacar 5y ago
  there are ascii variants of APL like j,q,k etc
e12e 5y ago
Seems there is an alternative history where Stallman went with APL and not lisp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#GNU_APL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#GNU... > (...) Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project, was an early adopter of APL, using it to write a text editor as a high school student in the summer of 1969. And: Rho, rho, rho of X Always equals 1 Rho is dimension, rho rho rank. APL is fun! Richard M. Stallman, 1969 https://www.gnu.org/software/apl/ https://www.gnu.org/software/apl/ But: > GNU APL was written and is being maintained by Jürgen Sauermann. and I believe it's fairly young when compared to emacs/emacs lisp.
rak1507 5y ago
Yeah agreed, Dyalog APL started out on Unix but is now more focused on Windows, I wish I could integrate it into scripts and things but it's often difficult/impossible to do so.
boffinAudio 5y ago
In the very halcyon days of Unix, lets just say early-80's, I met so many new-to-C guys coming away from APL screaming, with their hair on fire, that I, as an innocent young mangenue, was sure it would be one of those languages that would die a horrid yet rapid death and I could therefore completely ignore it. Yet, here we are. I'm still amazed to see people using it, and even more amazed to see someone break it out for some toy play. Still, not gonna learn it. I like my hair.

by wahern 5y ago

jolmg 5y ago

> Maybe if Stallman or some early GNU participant had championed APL we'd all be either using APL or constantly excusing ourselves. I think the major issue is that APL seems to require more than ASCII to work it.

wahern 5y ago
AFAIU APL implementations very early on supported ASCII equivalents. But maybe it was too late to either disabuse people of the notion that it required non-ASCII, or the convention proved too strong to overcome.
voldacar 5y ago
there are ascii variants of APL like j,q,k etc

e12e 5y ago

Seems there is an alternative history where Stallman went with APL and not lisp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#GNU_APL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#GNU... > (...) Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project, was an early adopter of APL, using it to write a text editor as a high school student in the summer of 1969. And: Rho, rho, rho of X Always equals 1 Rho is dimension, rho rho rank. APL is fun! Richard M. Stallman, 1969 https://www.gnu.org/software/apl/ https://www.gnu.org/software/apl/ But: > GNU APL was written and is being maintained by Jürgen Sauermann. and I believe it's fairly young when compared to emacs/emacs lisp.

rak1507 5y ago

Yeah agreed, Dyalog APL started out on Unix but is now more focused on Windows, I wish I could integrate it into scripts and things but it's often difficult/impossible to do so.

boffinAudio 5y ago

In the very halcyon days of Unix, lets just say early-80's, I met so many new-to-C guys coming away from APL screaming, with their hair on fire, that I, as an innocent young mangenue, was sure it would be one of those languages that would die a horrid yet rapid death and I could therefore completely ignore it. Yet, here we are. I'm still amazed to see people using it, and even more amazed to see someone break it out for some toy play. Still, not gonna learn it. I like my hair.