It's not only the APL community which has suffered at the hands of the educational community.
http://www.veracode.com/blog/2013/04/why-johnny-cant-code/ But I wonder if anyone has been studying the economics of educationally driven corporate restructures. -- Raul On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:00 AM, David Mitchell <[email protected]> wrote: > I am not sure which 'it' you are referring to. If you mean why I think APL > was widely accepted at this company, my best guess is that it started with > the powerful corporate group that had been educated in their field with APL > as a fundamental tool for their work. This group had a good story for upper > management of how APL would help this group provide real time business > analysis and much faster market response in an era when punch card input, > green bar output and multi-month COBOL development cycles were the norm. > > Having a powerful sponsor that demanded APL got APL in the door. The > initial marketing of APL as a pay as you go service made the financials > attractive for rapid and relatively low cost startup and allowed almost free > incremental usage by other groups. > > I suspect that one of the most important factors helping APL move beyond a > specialized support tool for a single functional area was the fact that this > version of APL came with an international network in an era when national > PTT laws and exclusionary regulations made it exceedingly difficult to set > up such a multinational corporate data network. This APL network supported > the establishment of APL as the international email hub of the company, > which got APL terminals on the desks of almost all corporate office workers > and management (and even on factory floors) world wide. > > Finally, the extensive libraries of APL based tools and pre-built > applications that came with this version of APL provided the relatively > naive developers and users with a set of building blocks and examples that > allowed them to use the techniques of incremental real time development to > solve real world problems much more quickly and effectively than competing > tool sets could. > > As far as I can tell, the beginning of the end of APL at this company came > from much the same genesis as the beginning: how APL was used and portrayed > in education. After the period of APL'S ascendancy, the new crop of MBA > power brokers were taught management theories that had no place for APL (or > most other idiosyncratic computer languages) in the new models of corporate > information management. The original young lions that championed APL were > now seen as aging advocates of a legacy support nightmare. > > Some APL developers now started to drop support of APL and retooled to go to > where the corporate sun shone. As the number of developers supporting APL > declined, the self-fulfilling prophecy of "lack of support for a > non-standard language" influenced program managers to chose other options. > > And there were now other options available. APL was no longer the only > choice. The software and services market had caught up with APL'S early > monopolistic lead and now supported the new corporate data services model > which had shifted from custom solutions to off the shelf standard > deliverables that the new movers and shakers demanded. > > So, as I see it, while the issue of APL character set was used as ammunition > in minor skirmishes, the APL character set was never the overriding issue > for the decisions that led to using or not using APL and APL-developed > solutions at this company. > > > On 4/12/2013 4:32, Björn Helgason wrote: >> >> what is it then? >> On Apr 11, 2013 7:55 PM, "David Mitchell" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> I'll throw in a comment/story that is mostly true. I was hired at a large >>> company many years ago. One of my assignments was to eliminate APL >>> usage, >>> which was seen as overly expensive and not in the preferred company >>> direction. At the time, APL was probably the most widely used language >>> in >>> the company. >>> >>> I succeeded in my assignment to eliminate APL after many decades of work >>> in 2007. I suspect that there were pockets of continuing APL usage via >>> the >>> PC versions of APL (or J). >>> >>> There are many reasons why APL was so difficult to eliminate. In my >>> opinion, these are mostly the same reasons that led to APL being, from >>> many >>> points of view, one of the most important computer languages and >>> implementation environments in this company for many years. >>> >>> From what I saw of the adoption and later decline of APL usage, the APL >>> symbols were fairly far down on the list of the reasons for or against >>> the >>> usage of APL at this company. >>> >>> In a way, this current discussion of symbology reminds me of the >>> internecine battles in the past over the theoretical correctness of >>> various >>> implementations of enclosure. >>> >>> I will say my reasons for using both APL and J (and the dozen or so other >>> languages I use regularly) have not much to do with their usage of >>> symbolics or keywords. After learning the first few dozen languages, I >>> find that these differences are not very important to me. >>> >>> On 4/11/2013 14:56, Björn Helgason wrote: >>> >>>> On Apr 11, 2013 5:47 PM, "Joey K Tuttle" <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I have been tempted, several times, to make one comment and that is a >>>>> >>>> feeling that the APL character set was perhaps the single most important >>>> reason for lack of widespread acceptance and use of APL... >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I believe you are right. >>>> >>>> >>>> PS: A comment like that to c.l.a would not be popular. >>>> ------------------------------**------------------------------** >>>> ---------- >>>> For information about J forums see >>>> http://www.jsoftware.com/**forums.htm<http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm> >>>> >>>> ------------------------------**------------------------------** >>> >>> ---------- >>> For information about J forums see >>> http://www.jsoftware.com/**forums.htm<http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm> >>> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
