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FWIW APL is pretty influential to Matlab which is the inspiration for Numpy, etc. I think the trouble is that the authors are right about the importance of nota
by blululu 4y ago
FWIW APL is pretty influential to Matlab which is the inspiration for Numpy, etc. I think the trouble is that the authors are right about the importance of notation but they were also making the first pass and they made some choices that proved to be off in practice.
- skruger 4y agoIf you're familiar with both modern APL and the "Iverson ghost" NumPy, you'll likely find the latter a frustratingly crippled experience.
- blululu 4y agoFair. I don’t think anyone transitions from Matlab or Julia to Numpy and feels good about it, but the broader ecosystem advantages are decisive there.
- buescher 4y agoI suspect a lot of the casual fascination with APL these days comes from frustration with Numpy. In the same way that nobody had anything good to say about Ada until C++ and Java were firmly entrenched.
- skruger 4y agoI am an APL-fan specifically because it's like a parallel universe where evolution took a different path: what are often considered anti-patterns in main stream languages is best practice in APL. It's a welcome relief from the strait-jacket of "the Zen of Python". No libraries? It's a feature. Single-letter variable names? Of course. Terseness as a virtue? Oh yes. Right-to-left flow? Why not? Precedence levels? Who needs them? Tacit? Bring it on. APL is easily the most productive tool in my chest.
- nequo 4y agoWhat kinds of tasks have you used APL for?
- skruger 4y agoI use APL for any task I previously used Python for, involving grabbing some data typically via a json-over-http API, massaging, aggregating and otherwise combining it to produce summaries or reports. I've gradually rewritten my bunch of scripts and code I use daily from python to APL, and seen a 10-100x reduction in code size, and usually a significant speed-up (admittedly, Python is a low bar here).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]