What are APL and J? APL is a programming language originally created by Ken Iverson in the 1960's. APL began as a notation to describe mathematical ideas. The notation consists of a set of symbols and a syntax to describe the processing of data. The power of APL comes from its direct manipulation of n-dimensional arrays of data. The APL primitives express broad ideas of data manipulation. These rich and powerful primitives can be strung together to perform in one line what would require pages in other programming languages. APL's interactive environment encourages experimentation and facilitates rapid prototyping and modification of programs and applications. APL is one of the most concise, consistent, and powerful programming languages ever devised. J is a relatively new incarnation of APL. J removed the need for a special character set, using ASCII characters for all primitives.

Why APL?