4 ms·

As far as readability goes, this might have as well been written in machine language.

by Sandman 17y ago

gruseom 17y ago
Except that a machine language program would be thousands if not millions of times as long. Readability is relative. Java is unreadable to my grandmother. Turkish is unreadable to me. In other words, the opinion of someone who hasn't learned a language regarding its readability is irrelevant. It is true that the way you read a language like this is different from the way you read Java. You don't expect to grok a line of code atomically, then move to the next line. It's more like reading math: you work with each line, understanding what makes it tick. No doubt that doesn't appeal to everyone. But the APL/K/J people do amazing things. The ultimate answer as to whether or not this is just line noise? http://kx.com/Customers/end-user-customers.php http://kx.com/Customers/end-user-customers.php
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > Readability is relative. Java is unreadable to my grandmother. Turkish is unreadable to me. In other words, the opinion of someone who hasn't learned a language regarding its readability is irrelevant. What a gem! I should start a collection of those, every now and then you get these things you can just frame and look at three times a day here.
  - gruseom 17y ago
    I'm just glad somebody got my point. It seems so obvious, yet it must not be, because the contrary is much more common. It especially bears repeating in the context of a largely undiscovered gem like K.
- Luc 17y ago
  > Except that a machine language program would be thousands if not millions of times as long. Oi, I seriously doubt that. Seriously, millions? It's all math. Take a couple of assembler instructions per operation. I bet there's 256 byte assembler demo's out there...
  - gruseom 17y ago
    You're probably right. I was thinking maybe millions of 0s and 1s (if those count as tokens at the lowest level) but that's getting silly.
albertcardona 17y ago
Breaking into many lines and renaming variables would go a long way to make this code look more like C.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  For a transformation in the opposite direction, here's a first draft interpreter for J (a related language) in J-ish C. http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Incunabulum http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Incunabulum It segfaults, because it's written in rather non-portable C that assumes sizeof(function pointer) == sizeof(int), among other things. It's an interesting piece of code, though. I don't completely understand it - I'm confused by the concept of rank in J, and haven't worked with the language enough to get over that hump. (IIRC, K avoids "rank" entirely, and just uses either an array or an array-of-arrays for multiple dimensions.) I've only been a tourist in the APL family of languages, but what I've seen has left me quite impressed.
  - frig 17y ago
    Please take this not as an insult but as invitation to offer help. Rank shouldn't be something to get confused about; if it is you're probably overthinking it. What did you find confusing about it?
    - silentbicycle 17y ago
      I found the way that the linked interpreter above implements dimensions rather confusing, mostly. Thanks for the offer, but I didn't get that far because I decided I was better off focusing on Erlang for the time being. I'm very curious about that language family, I'm just trying to not spread myself too thin. When I get back to it, I'll try working through the J labs - it's probably a much better way to pick it up than untangling a semi-obfuscated interpreter.
      - frig 17y ago
        Yeah I've not studied that interpreter so if that's your specific interest no luck sadly; rank is an easy idea but wouldn't surprise me if there's some trick to it in an implementation that short. I think it'd be easier to untangle if you already had a working knowledge of the language but given the line-noisy look of J I can't blame you for trying the shortcut. The interactive J labs are very good. You might also find the J for C programmers discussion of rank particularly helpful if you are looking at learning by understanding an implementation. I figure the array languages will make a minor comeback soon what with gpus / larrabee / etc showing up on the horizon and what with more-versatile input devices showing up (making it easier to go back to funky symbols instead of line noise).

As far as readability goes, this might have as well been written in machine language.

by Sandman 17y ago

As far as readability goes, this might have as well been written in machine language.

Except that a machine language program would be thousands if not millions of times as long. Readability is relative. Java is unreadable to my grandmother. Turkish is unreadable to me. In other words, the opinion of someone who hasn't learned a language regarding its readability is irrelevant. It is true that the way you read a language like this is different from the way you read Java. You don't expect to grok a line of code atomically, then move to the next line. It's more like reading math: you work with each line, understanding what makes it tick. No doubt that doesn't appeal to everyone. But the APL/K/J people do amazing things. The ultimate answer as to whether or not this is just line noise? http://kx.com/Customers/end-user-customers.php http://kx.com/Customers/end-user-customers.php

jacquesm 17y ago
> Readability is relative. Java is unreadable to my grandmother. Turkish is unreadable to me. In other words, the opinion of someone who hasn't learned a language regarding its readability is irrelevant. What a gem! I should start a collection of those, every now and then you get these things you can just frame and look at three times a day here.
- gruseom 17y ago
  I'm just glad somebody got my point. It seems so obvious, yet it must not be, because the contrary is much more common. It especially bears repeating in the context of a largely undiscovered gem like K.
Luc 17y ago
> Except that a machine language program would be thousands if not millions of times as long. Oi, I seriously doubt that. Seriously, millions? It's all math. Take a couple of assembler instructions per operation. I bet there's 256 byte assembler demo's out there...
- gruseom 17y ago
  You're probably right. I was thinking maybe millions of 0s and 1s (if those count as tokens at the lowest level) but that's getting silly.

albertcardona 17y ago

Breaking into many lines and renaming variables would go a long way to make this code look more like C.

silentbicycle 17y ago
For a transformation in the opposite direction, here's a first draft interpreter for J (a related language) in J-ish C. http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Incunabulum http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Incunabulum It segfaults, because it's written in rather non-portable C that assumes sizeof(function pointer) == sizeof(int), among other things. It's an interesting piece of code, though. I don't completely understand it - I'm confused by the concept of rank in J, and haven't worked with the language enough to get over that hump. (IIRC, K avoids "rank" entirely, and just uses either an array or an array-of-arrays for multiple dimensions.) I've only been a tourist in the APL family of languages, but what I've seen has left me quite impressed.
- frig 17y ago
  Please take this not as an insult but as invitation to offer help. Rank shouldn't be something to get confused about; if it is you're probably overthinking it. What did you find confusing about it?
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    I found the way that the linked interpreter above implements dimensions rather confusing, mostly. Thanks for the offer, but I didn't get that far because I decided I was better off focusing on Erlang for the time being. I'm very curious about that language family, I'm just trying to not spread myself too thin. When I get back to it, I'll try working through the J labs - it's probably a much better way to pick it up than untangling a semi-obfuscated interpreter.
    - frig 17y ago
      Yeah I've not studied that interpreter so if that's your specific interest no luck sadly; rank is an easy idea but wouldn't surprise me if there's some trick to it in an implementation that short. I think it'd be easier to untangle if you already had a working knowledge of the language but given the line-noisy look of J I can't blame you for trying the shortcut. The interactive J labs are very good. You might also find the J for C programmers discussion of rank particularly helpful if you are looking at learning by understanding an implementation. I figure the array languages will make a minor comeback soon what with gpus / larrabee / etc showing up on the horizon and what with more-versatile input devices showing up (making it easier to go back to funky symbols instead of line noise).