3 ms·

Were APL, K, J, etc. ever used in production? Array programming seems like a cool idea (albeit being counterintuitive sometimes), and it's maybe one of the ters

Were APL, K, J, etc. ever used in production? Array programming seems like a cool idea (albeit being counterintuitive sometimes), and it's maybe one of the tersest syntaxes I've ever seen.

itishappy 3y ago
I've heard it's seen limited adoption in finance. https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies
mianos 3y ago
I mainly work in financial markets. I have personally seen it used many times in some places at most of the places I have worked at. KDB/Q is an important component for historical data and order capture here at OSL. The only issue I have is there are few developers and they cost a lot of money. We are lucky we have a very good one.
- devin 3y ago
  How much is "a lot"?
  - kristjansson 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11564920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11564920
7thaccount 3y ago
APL came out a LONG time ago and was sold by IBM for awhile. If you look for Dyalog's customers you'll see some recognizable names. Volvo has their entire inventory system in Dyalog APL or something like that if iirc. Kdb+ is used a good bit on Wall Street and also by F1 racing and a few other places. I'm sure J is in use somewhere, but it's probably a bit rarer. https://www.dyalog.com/case-studies/hercules.htm https://www.dyalog.com/case-studies/hercules.htm
jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
APL had non trivial uptake during its heyday. J is apparently somewhat popular with actuaries and similar. K/Q is used by a number of finance companies, via the KDB vector database. Here the selling point was that the overall system was great for in memory vector processing of stock tick data. Arthur Witney also built a language named A+ while at Morgan Stanley that was used in production as an improvement over various previous APL apps. They're odd languages but have found successful niches.

Were APL, K, J, etc. ever used in production? Array programming seems like a cool idea (albeit being counterintuitive sometimes), and it's maybe one of the tersest syntaxes I've ever seen.

itishappy 3y ago

I've heard it's seen limited adoption in finance. https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies

mianos 3y ago

I mainly work in financial markets. I have personally seen it used many times in some places at most of the places I have worked at. KDB/Q is an important component for historical data and order capture here at OSL. The only issue I have is there are few developers and they cost a lot of money. We are lucky we have a very good one.

devin 3y ago
How much is "a lot"?
- kristjansson 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11564920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11564920

7thaccount 3y ago

APL came out a LONG time ago and was sold by IBM for awhile. If you look for Dyalog's customers you'll see some recognizable names. Volvo has their entire inventory system in Dyalog APL or something like that if iirc. Kdb+ is used a good bit on Wall Street and also by F1 racing and a few other places. I'm sure J is in use somewhere, but it's probably a bit rarer. https://www.dyalog.com/case-studies/hercules.htm https://www.dyalog.com/case-studies/hercules.htm

jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago

APL had non trivial uptake during its heyday. J is apparently somewhat popular with actuaries and similar. K/Q is used by a number of finance companies, via the KDB vector database. Here the selling point was that the overall system was great for in memory vector processing of stock tick data. Arthur Witney also built a language named A+ while at Morgan Stanley that was used in production as an improvement over various previous APL apps. They're odd languages but have found successful niches.