Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!haven.umd.edu!socrates!socrates!rockwell
From: rockwell@socrates.umd.edu (Raul Deluth Miller-Rockwell)
Subject: Re: APL and IDL
In-Reply-To: jph@astro.umd.edu's message of 12 Nov 92 15:57:00 GMT
Message-ID: <ROCKWELL.92Nov12233433@socrates.umd.edu>
Sender: rockwell@socrates.umd.edu (Raul Deluth Miller-Rockwell)
Organization: Traveller
References: <16946@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 04:34:33 GMT
Lines: 27

J. Patrick Harrington:
   It is interesting how the IDL developers acknowledge their debt to
   APL. The adoption of the ideas in APL is a good thing for users,
   but probably a bad thing for APL, as some of these features will no
   longer be unique to APL. Of course APL (and J) can do so much more,
   but the potential audience for the "more exotic" features is not as
   broad.

Perhaps I think of "good" and "bad" as meaning something different,
but I see the adoption of APL features as a good thing for APL.
People who are familiar with some of APL's features are less likely to
be overwhelmed by the "strangeness" of the language, and more likely
to be able to comprehend the advantages of using the language.
Likewise, the more APL features creep into other languages and
systems, the easier it will be for me to use those systems.

On the other hand, I don't see the advantage in being contentious with
other languages.  Historically, that's been something of a a dead end.

If there is one single problem that's hurting the APL community today
it's the difficulty in getting APL systems to take advantage of
advancements from other parts of the computing community.

Anyways, if J continues to advance as it has been, you'll have plenty
of attention catching features to talk about.

Raul Miller-<rockwell@socrates.umd.edu>
