4 ms·
I 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
by buescher 4y ago
I 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]