3 ms·

I seem to recall some fellow or other describing notation as a tool of thought. That doesn't sound superficial to me.

• kragen 3y ago
  that was iverson, explaining the motivation for apl. you may have noticed that apl-like notations have not supplanted algol-like notations like c, python, golang, lua, and scheme for programming in the way that arabic numerals have supplanted roman numerals and algebraic formulas have supplanted geometric diagrams and natural-language arguments. the apl data model is very popular in some application areas (numpy, r, and tensorflow are based on it) but the notation is not. today apl, j, and k are less popular than haskell to me, this indicates that iverson was mistaken: apl users did not gain major cognitive advantages over users of programming languages with more conventional syntax, so language choice has been driven by other factors. the same cannot be said about programming language choice in general; writing things in assembly language clearly takes much longer than writing them in c, python, golang, lua, scheme, or basic. but that turns out to be a result of their different data models, not different syntax