Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!torn!spool.mu.edu!uunet!portal!quadsys!roland
From: roland@quadsys.com (Roland Besserer)
Subject: Re: J is NOT APL (was Re: Interpreter advice sought.)
Message-ID: <C1EICv.H9@quadsys.com>
Organization: QUAD Systems
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3
References: <1993Jan23.100553.21973@lth.se>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 08:31:42 GMT
Lines: 38

kurt@dna.lth.se (Kurt Swanson) writes:
: kurt@dna.lth.se (Kurt Swanson)  [That's me] writes:
: >Is there any "free" apl *interpreter* available for UNIX and/or MAC's???
:                      ===
: 
: Many have written to me tell me about the wonders of J.  Thanks, but
: I'm not interested.  I've used it. It's not APL.
: 
: To me the "enhancements" of J from APL are minimal, and certainly not
: enough to swallow that terrible ASCIIzation of the language (even if
: you can say J is a modification of APL).
: 

: In these days of fonts galore, graphical windows (of many types),
: postscript, and last but not least UNICODE, there is NO reason to
: switch to an antiquated 7-bit US standard.
: 
: From a pure programming theory standpoint, J is flawed where APL is
: not.  APL uses real mathematical symbols that, (get this), perform
: what they look like they should.  J uses cryptic combinations of
: overloaded operators taken from a subset of english punctuation.  Talk
: about unreadability!!!


I felt exactly the same way after first looking into J. I still rememeber
the first time I saw a APL printout and I was immeditely intrigued the
the simplicity of the languge and its character set. It took me very little
time to become familiar with the language and I have enjoyed using it ever
since. A major part of this enjoyment comes from the use of easily 
idetifyable and recognizable characters.

J is just a confusing, unreadable mess and, as you said, there simply isn't
any reason for J's overuse of ASCII punctuation characters.

-- 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Besserer          QUAD Systems, Santa Cruz             roland@quadsys.com
