6 ms·

my first programming job (as in 12-14 hours/day) was mostly IBM APL2, some C and fortran (we often built parallel models that had to tie out to the penny). Tha

by gtani 13y ago

my first programming job (as in 12-14 hours/day) was mostly IBM APL2, some C and fortran (we often built parallel models that had to tie out to the penny). That's actually pretty idiomatic (doesn't use any language extensions from STSC, Sharp or IBM) but, um, I can't understand it. BTW, the last time i checked (the 90s?), the only decent book for learning APL was Polivka/Pakin, but doesn't seem readily available http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=apl+programming&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aapl+programming http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D...

gaius 13y ago
I used to work with a bunch of old geezers from IP Shsrp. Good times, tho' left my mind spinning!
- gtani 13y ago
  Yeah, those Toronto guys hated IBM APL. I had a friend whose Dad got him a job in high school working for Ken Iversen at IBM, who taught him APL programming.
protomyth 13y ago
Is this the book? http://www.amazon.com/P-L-Prentice-Hall-automatic-computation/dp/0130388858/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380308221&sr=1-1&keywords=0130388858 http://www.amazon.com/P-L-Prentice-Hall-automatic-computatio... or this http://www.amazon.com/Edition-Polivka-Raymond-published-Prentice/dp/B008DM6Z1K http://www.amazon.com/Edition-Polivka-Raymond-published-Pren...
- gtani 13y ago
  it's the first one, I think, mine had a red cover.
TheZenPsycho 13y ago
I don't specifically follow the code itself but I watched the youtube video, and my undestanding is that it takes a 2d array of the previous game board as 0's and 1's, duplicates it 8 times (that's this part: ¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽), uses the rotation operators to transpose the arrays left, right, up, down, upleft, upright, downleft, downright, sums the result (this part: +/,) , and runs that through a test for whether the sum in each cell is either 3 or 4 (this part: 3 4=) , turns that into a 1, and returns 0 on all the other cells. the result is the next step. There's little details in there that I don't quite get due to my unfamiliarity with APL

by gtani 13y ago

gaius 13y ago

I used to work with a bunch of old geezers from IP Shsrp. Good times, tho' left my mind spinning!

gtani 13y ago
Yeah, those Toronto guys hated IBM APL. I had a friend whose Dad got him a job in high school working for Ken Iversen at IBM, who taught him APL programming.

protomyth 13y ago

Is this the book? http://www.amazon.com/P-L-Prentice-Hall-automatic-computation/dp/0130388858/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380308221&sr=1-1&keywords=0130388858 http://www.amazon.com/P-L-Prentice-Hall-automatic-computatio... or this http://www.amazon.com/Edition-Polivka-Raymond-published-Prentice/dp/B008DM6Z1K http://www.amazon.com/Edition-Polivka-Raymond-published-Pren...

gtani 13y ago
it's the first one, I think, mine had a red cover.

TheZenPsycho 13y ago

I don't specifically follow the code itself but I watched the youtube video, and my undestanding is that it takes a 2d array of the previous game board as 0's and 1's, duplicates it 8 times (that's this part: ¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽), uses the rotation operators to transpose the arrays left, right, up, down, upleft, upright, downleft, downright, sums the result (this part: +/,) , and runs that through a test for whether the sum in each cell is either 3 or 4 (this part: 3 4=) , turns that into a 1, and returns 0 on all the other cells. the result is the next step. There's little details in there that I don't quite get due to my unfamiliarity with APL