Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
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From: vpcsc4@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Emmett McLean)
Subject: Re: Control Structures
Message-ID: <1993Apr10.183255.28412@csus.edu>
Sender: news@csus.edu
Organization: San Francisco State University
References: <C596LF.A6s@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1993 18:32:55 GMT
Lines: 56

In article David Liebtag writes:
>
>   Would you mind kindly signing your articles so we know who we're
>talking to?  Thanks.

 Sorry about that.

>
>Do you know if Manugistics is going to implement the control
>structures discussed at Minnowbrook last fall that was based
>on extensions to labels?
>

    This may be more that what you asked for, (and may be old
    news) but anyway ...

    I recall, from Chris Lee's December `92
    visit to the Bay Area's APL User Group :

 1. That while Manugistics APL can be used to write in house
    RDBMS and accounting systems, most firms are purchasing
    these packages and are not writting them themselves. To
    reflect this, Manugistics is making APL into a
    software-package-integration-communications-super-language.
    Consistent with this vision Manugistics feels their move
    into the Object Oriented Paradigm has been both exciting
    and successful. Chris says their in-house programmers are
    full of ideas and that we should see alot of new magic from
    them in the next few releases of their product.

 2. The fundamental reason for introducing new control structures 
    is to make applications more maintainable. 

 3. I understand Manugistics already has
    some in-house prototypes. However, I do not recall Chris
    mentioning any details regarding the form of the new control
    structures, except to say that they would not be following
    the model of the C programming language to use brackets
    to set of pieces of code.

 4. Manugistics is firmly committed to the APL character set.

 5. When asked if the in-house programmers were discussing J,
    he said no and added that there wasn't much interest in it. 
    He emphasized that he does not think of J as a dialect of APL.
    Too different.

 Chris's presentation to our group was the last among several
 to those who can be described as "the converted" (those
 who've programmed in C and prefer APL).  This year
 he is focusing on the much more challenging task of introducing
 Manugistics APL to "the unconverted".  I'm curious on how things
 are going.

 Emmett

