4 ms·

Hmm, so why J over Dyalog APL then?

by anyfoo 4y ago

Avshalom 4y ago
it's libre and gratis, if that's not something that bothers you (and to be sure if you're just writing code for your own edification it's not a practical problem) then i would recommend dyalog, although as a side effect of being open J has a (perhaps only slightly) larger free ecosystem and community. the down side is that subjectively some people (myself included) find J uglier, less effective as a tool of thought and due to some syntactic features (hooks and forks, but no proper lightweight anonymous function syntax)-prone to people posting impenetrably dense code as "examples"
- anyfoo 4y ago
  I see, thanks! Looks like I might try both. The "no proper lightweight anonymous function syntax" sounds weird to me, I would have thought that's paramount for an array language? Do I misunderstand?
  - Avshalom 4y ago
    In J if you want to do something fairly complex without writing a function you can pile up a bunch of verbs/operators into a big (point free) verb-train. You can't do recursion, loops or explicit flow control but in the Array Languages that's not much of a handicap, it can get pretty hairy to read though In dyalog you can (as of about v13) do that if you want, or you can just use curly brackets { and inside of them have lexically scoped variables, multiple expressions, recursion and if/then (no loops either though) }
    - jpf0 4y ago
      J recursion is $: You can do flow control in both scripting style and array style. Loops are loops.
      - Avshalom 4y ago
        is $ meaningful in verb trains? because that was what I was referring to when I said no loops/recursion/flowcontrol N.B. a sibling says J has added a direct definition construct while I wasn't watching which renders my comment largely irrelevant although the I feel general point that a lot of J 'example code' tends towards difficult-for-noobs to parse verb trains still holds.
        jpf0 4y ago
        Yes. this one is fun. Recursive, memoized Fibonacci, the 155th integer precisely. {{(-&2 +&$: -&1) ^: (1&<) M. y}} 155x It'll run in your browser in 0.003 seconds. https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/#code=%7B%7B%28-%262%20%2B%26%24%3A%20-%261%29%20%5E%3A%20%281%26%3C%29%20M.%20y%7D%7D%20155x https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/#code=%7B...
  - moonchild 4y ago
    This was true historically, but recent versions of j introduced a 'direct definition' syntax similar to dyalog's dfns.
- Qem 4y ago
  Do you know if it's available from GNU/Linux repositories? One thing that bothers me with single letter language names is that it makes searching information cumbersome, due to lots of noise in search results.

Hmm, so why J over Dyalog APL then?

by anyfoo 4y ago

Hmm, so why J over Dyalog APL then?

it's libre and gratis, if that's not something that bothers you (and to be sure if you're just writing code for your own edification it's not a practical problem) then i would recommend dyalog, although as a side effect of being open J has a (perhaps only slightly) larger free ecosystem and community. the down side is that subjectively some people (myself included) find J uglier, less effective as a tool of thought and due to some syntactic features (hooks and forks, but no proper lightweight anonymous function syntax)-prone to people posting impenetrably dense code as "examples"

anyfoo 4y ago
I see, thanks! Looks like I might try both. The "no proper lightweight anonymous function syntax" sounds weird to me, I would have thought that's paramount for an array language? Do I misunderstand?
- Avshalom 4y ago
  In J if you want to do something fairly complex without writing a function you can pile up a bunch of verbs/operators into a big (point free) verb-train. You can't do recursion, loops or explicit flow control but in the Array Languages that's not much of a handicap, it can get pretty hairy to read though In dyalog you can (as of about v13) do that if you want, or you can just use curly brackets { and inside of them have lexically scoped variables, multiple expressions, recursion and if/then (no loops either though) }
  - jpf0 4y ago
    J recursion is $: You can do flow control in both scripting style and array style. Loops are loops.
    - Avshalom 4y ago
      is $ meaningful in verb trains? because that was what I was referring to when I said no loops/recursion/flowcontrol N.B. a sibling says J has added a direct definition construct while I wasn't watching which renders my comment largely irrelevant although the I feel general point that a lot of J 'example code' tends towards difficult-for-noobs to parse verb trains still holds.
      - jpf0 4y ago
        Yes. this one is fun. Recursive, memoized Fibonacci, the 155th integer precisely. {{(-&2 +&$: -&1) ^: (1&<) M. y}} 155x It'll run in your browser in 0.003 seconds. https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/#code=%7B%7B%28-%262%20%2B%26%24%3A%20-%261%29%20%5E%3A%20%281%26%3C%29%20M.%20y%7D%7D%20155x https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/#code=%7B...
- moonchild 4y ago
  This was true historically, but recent versions of j introduced a 'direct definition' syntax similar to dyalog's dfns.
Qem 4y ago
Do you know if it's available from GNU/Linux repositories? One thing that bothers me with single letter language names is that it makes searching information cumbersome, due to lots of noise in search results.