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>They're (poorly) aping mathematical notation without the properties that give actual notations their power to augment thought using symbolic manipulation Yeah
by mhuffman 2y ago
>They're (poorly) aping mathematical notation without the properties that give actual notations their power to augment thought using symbolic manipulation
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with that. Both of these are some of the most eye-popping books I have ever read related to math and computing [0] [1] (note, both pdf files) Both are well-written (by the guy that created both APL and J) in extremely approachable language and the introduction of J into the mix is almost obvious compared to doing some of the common operations in any other non-array language. These two documents and Joe Armstrong's PhD thesis were ones that really made me "think different" about programming.
[0]https://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/arithmetic.pdf https://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/arithmetic.pdf
[1]https://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/calculus.pdf https://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/calculus.pdf
- msla 2y agoThe whole point of mathematical notation is to ease the cognitive burden by making certain things more automatic via symbol-shuffling: We don't need to think too hard about solving an algebra problem because we can shuffle symbols around and be assured that the result is valid. I've never seen APL or any other array language used that way, even though it's the only thing that could possibly justify their pathological terseness.