7 ms·

Who is using APL in production out of curiosity?

dybber 5y ago
We have a lot of APL in SimCorp and are one of Dyalog’s main customers. 1.6 million lines in 2014 I’ve heard, but I don’t know how much we have right now. The biggest single issue with using APL in production is developer hiring and training.
Funkeeee 5y ago
https://www.dyalog.com/reference-customers/simcorp.htm https://www.dyalog.com/reference-customers/simcorp.htm This reference profile is really old though, numbers are way off. Anyway, APL is used in production.
RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
A list of companies using array languages is maintained here: https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies
agumonkey 5y ago
check out Aaron Hsu on youtube, he works with it (finance sector IIRC)
- melling 5y ago
  https://bobkonf.de/2019/hsu.html https://bobkonf.de/2019/hsu.html
- mlochbaum 5y ago
  Aaron's been an academic for most of his career and was working for Dyalog as of 2020 (edit: still there, per [0]). I wouldn't describe his work as "production", since it mainly relates to APL itself rather than some external problem to be solved with it. [0] https://www.sacrideo.us/speaking-at-fnconf-22-dsls-architecture-structural-design-in-apl-3-ways/ https://www.sacrideo.us/speaking-at-fnconf-22-dsls-architect...
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    oh wow I got confused then
  - pxeger1 5y ago
    Aaron doesn't appear on https://www.dyalog.com/meet-team-dyalog.htm https://www.dyalog.com/meet-team-dyalog.htm
    - mlochbaum 5y ago
      True, maybe he isn't considered a member of "team Dyalog" while still being legally an employee or contractor? He was hired in early 2020 a few months before I left, and partly funded by Dyalog before that. And he's told me he prefers to be seen as independent, but that was when he was working on his PhD and Indiana University was his primary affiliation.
time_to_smile 5y ago
I think the emphasis on "in production" doesn't make sense for a lot of languages. Not everything has to be part of a highly engineered, user facing system to be useful. For example, I would never use R "in production", however I have used R to make many important internal decisions, and generate recurring reports, etc. Very few people use Excel "in production" but there are plenty of very important companies using Excel. Likewise I can imagine there are a few people out there using APL for something meaningful and important, even if that code is never truly "in production". There are plenty of useful, wonderful programs written in the world that were never destined to be part of a production system. The code I've enjoyed writing the most and learned the most about the world from writing typically falls into this category.
- sshine 5y ago
  My first employer used Excel "in production": A C# app would read numbers from a shared network drive, feed them into a timeseries database, and the real-time part of the system would be reloaded. Eventually a web-interface was put in place instead of the Excel sheet that provided for faster input validation.
- xienze 5y ago
  I think the emphasis on “in production” is because it’s assumed that the only people really using APL are folks maintaining legacy codebases. I picture APL like COBOL: there’s no(?) reason someone would even toy around with it these days unless there was some intrinsic property of APL that makes it uniquely suited to some problem domain, and to such a degree that people can overlook its major shortcomings. _Is_ there something APL is actually useful for these days?
jjtheblunt 5y ago
Isn't Formula 1 using kx/q for their extreme realtime data processing? https://kx.com/ https://kx.com/
jart 5y ago
APL is a great language for any kind of engineer who isn't a software engineer.

We have a lot of APL in SimCorp and are one of Dyalog’s main customers. 1.6 million lines in 2014 I’ve heard, but I don’t know how much we have right now. The biggest single issue with using APL in production is developer hiring and training.

Funkeeee 5y ago

https://www.dyalog.com/reference-customers/simcorp.htm https://www.dyalog.com/reference-customers/simcorp.htm This reference profile is really old though, numbers are way off. Anyway, APL is used in production.

RodgerTheGreat 5y ago

A list of companies using array languages is maintained here: https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies

agumonkey 5y ago

check out Aaron Hsu on youtube, he works with it (finance sector IIRC)

melling 5y ago
https://bobkonf.de/2019/hsu.html https://bobkonf.de/2019/hsu.html
mlochbaum 5y ago
Aaron's been an academic for most of his career and was working for Dyalog as of 2020 (edit: still there, per [0]). I wouldn't describe his work as "production", since it mainly relates to APL itself rather than some external problem to be solved with it. [0] https://www.sacrideo.us/speaking-at-fnconf-22-dsls-architecture-structural-design-in-apl-3-ways/ https://www.sacrideo.us/speaking-at-fnconf-22-dsls-architect...
- agumonkey 5y ago
  oh wow I got confused then
- pxeger1 5y ago
  Aaron doesn't appear on https://www.dyalog.com/meet-team-dyalog.htm https://www.dyalog.com/meet-team-dyalog.htm
  - mlochbaum 5y ago
    True, maybe he isn't considered a member of "team Dyalog" while still being legally an employee or contractor? He was hired in early 2020 a few months before I left, and partly funded by Dyalog before that. And he's told me he prefers to be seen as independent, but that was when he was working on his PhD and Indiana University was his primary affiliation.

time_to_smile 5y ago

I think the emphasis on "in production" doesn't make sense for a lot of languages. Not everything has to be part of a highly engineered, user facing system to be useful. For example, I would never use R "in production", however I have used R to make many important internal decisions, and generate recurring reports, etc. Very few people use Excel "in production" but there are plenty of very important companies using Excel. Likewise I can imagine there are a few people out there using APL for something meaningful and important, even if that code is never truly "in production". There are plenty of useful, wonderful programs written in the world that were never destined to be part of a production system. The code I've enjoyed writing the most and learned the most about the world from writing typically falls into this category.

sshine 5y ago
My first employer used Excel "in production": A C# app would read numbers from a shared network drive, feed them into a timeseries database, and the real-time part of the system would be reloaded. Eventually a web-interface was put in place instead of the Excel sheet that provided for faster input validation.
xienze 5y ago
I think the emphasis on “in production” is because it’s assumed that the only people really using APL are folks maintaining legacy codebases. I picture APL like COBOL: there’s no(?) reason someone would even toy around with it these days unless there was some intrinsic property of APL that makes it uniquely suited to some problem domain, and to such a degree that people can overlook its major shortcomings. _Is_ there something APL is actually useful for these days?

jjtheblunt 5y ago

Isn't Formula 1 using kx/q for their extreme realtime data processing? https://kx.com/ https://kx.com/

jart 5y ago

APL is a great language for any kind of engineer who isn't a software engineer.