Subject: Re: A note of praise for APL
From: mslamm@pluto.cc.huji.ac.il (Zvi Lamm)
Date: 28 Jan 1995 07:22:33 GMT
References: <19950123.224819.24602@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca>

"Dennis Mar (mar@nps.navy.mil)" <2001P@NAVPGS.BITNET> writes:

>  This is a short note in praise of APL from a non-APL user.

>  In 1981 I took an APL course because APL looked like a clean
>  way to implement statistical procedures which used matrix
>  manipulation...

>  1.  APL benefited me pedagogically.  When reading about
>      programming concepts, APL provided that case different
>      from all the other languages I was acquainted with which
>      were iterative (Fortran, BASIC, Pascal).  Without APL I
>      could not have imagined any programming concept which
>      did not include DO LOOPs.

This is exactly the reason I advocate teaching programming using
languages out of the mainstream. Almost each"wierd" language is based
around some central concept which is important enough to be learned
through that languages. APL has dynamically shaped arrays, and many at a
time evaluation. Icon has generators etc. (BTW, both this languages
eliminate in these ways the usual use of iterators. I wrote a short
article about this, just a couple of days ago).
After learning languages like these you can continue to use normal
procedural languages if you like (or if you have to...), but you will
certainly see programming in a different light.

--
Ehud Lamm     mslamm@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il
