On Wed, 1 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive programming languages. We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others, based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart.
What would our world be like if the first home computers were to have had APL, instead of BASIC?
APL was incredible. I was amazed. I was immediately able to do a few simple things that were useful for my boss and myself, and writing simple programs within hours. Its matrix arithmetic was awesome. APL typeball on a selectric terminal at GSFC, . . . Some of the keys were re-labeled, but there was a chart on the wall of which keyboard characters were which APL symbols.
My cousin (David Ungar) referred to APL as "terse". He said that you could write a word processing program in a single line, but that was well past my abilities.
-- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
