Newsgroups:   comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!torn!utcsri!geac!jtsv16!itcyyz!yrloc!intern
From:         eem@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.COM (Mcdonnell, Eugene E.)
Subject:      quote on APL interpreted
Message-ID: <1993Jan22.173012.1749@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>
Sender: intern@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Intern via QUADRAM)
Reply-To:     eem@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.COM (Mcdonnell, Eugene E.)
Organization: Reuters Information Services (Canada)
Date:         22 Jan 93 17:00:06 UT


-----------Message forwarded from IPSA Mailbox-------------


no. 6922348 filed 16.26.22  fri 22 jan 1993
from eem
to   uclapl
subj quote on APL interpreted

Richard Gaylord is puzzled by the awkward Englishing of a 
sentence given in translation from the French, and attributed to 
Anthony Hoare.

My recollection is that the quote is not due to the Englishman 
Hoare but rather to the Dutchman Dijkstra, who, in an 
epigrammatic survey of the major programming languages, circa 
1970, which was generally more insulting to other languages than 
to APL, wrote about it, as best as I can recall, that "APL is a 
mistake carried out to perfection."  Praising with faint damn.  
Dijkstra came to visit the IBM Research laboratory in Yorktown 
Heights, New York, I believe about 1968, and was led into Ken 
Iverson's office there, where Ken gave him an introduction to 
APL.  He showed no response.  


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