Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv1!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!jvnc.net!phage!wchang
From: wchang@cshl.org (Bill Chang)
Subject: Re: Expressiveness of Language
Message-ID: <1992Mar23.203852.4998@cshl.org>
Sender: news@cshl.org (NO MAIL)
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
References: <1992Mar20.184205.4943@watmath.waterloo.edu> <LIBERTE.92Mar20173238@birch.cs.uiuc.edu> <ROCKWELL.92Mar21003041@socrates.umd.edu>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 92 20:38:52 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <ROCKWELL.92Mar21003041@socrates.umd.edu> rockwell@socrates.umd.edu 
(Raul Deluth Miller-Rockwell) writes:
>To address some of the comments I've seen in this newsgroup in the
>last couple days...  If you wish to guarantee that a function is only
>used monadically, you can use
>        fn : ''
>
>Likewise, if you wish to guarantee that the function is only used
>dyadically, you can use
>        '' : fn

Are you suggesting that we abandon J's default symbol combinations 
and use named functions instead, as a rule? :-)

Whose list should we use?  How do we arrive at a standard, so we
can all talk coherently?  If you have such a list and can help APLers
learn J, please post it!

There appear to be (at least) the following philosophies:
(1) APL and its glyphs should be preserved; ASCII renditions are
    too foreign or too difficult to read to be worthwhile.
(2) APL is too big and too terse; a few keywords are better than
    lots of seldom-used symbols.
(3) APL needs improvement, and while we are at it may as well make
    it richer and more compact.  J is the result.
(4) J is great but too complex; translating to keywords would help.
    Kind of like John Backus' functional language FP--not human-
    readable but ought to make a good target for compilers.

The amazing thing is, these differences are mostly syntactic.  
Can't there be some compromise?  Let's try to find a middle ground 
everybody can live with, so we can at least talk and be understood.  
Fix the notation/keywords/whatever.  If we can't even agree on 
this rather trivial matter, how can we hope to tackle real, semantic 
differences among extended APLs?


-- Bill Chang (wchang@cshl.org)         Cold Spring Harbor Lab., NY

p.s. A positive note: ten years ago the LISP community was divided
into MacLISP and InterLISP camps.  Now there is only CommonLISP.
