Dijkstra is dead and it's kind of unfair to argue against him. But I do have one such argument: *A Letter from Dijkstra on APL <http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/Dijkstra_Letter.htm>*.
Another paper which is relevant to your question, is *A History of APL in 50 Functions* <http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/50/>. It's in APL but can easily be done in J (other than being 50 years old). On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 2:13 PM, Dabrowski, Andrew John <[email protected] > wrote: > After reading "Algebra as Language" and "Computers and Mathematical > Notation", I'm starting to see J the perfect language for numerical > computation. But for general purpose programming I can see Dijkstra's > point. > > When APL was designed computers were seen largely as calculating > machines. But by the 1970s GUIs were starting to be developed, and > computers were being applied in areas where tensors were no longer adequate > as the sole data structure. One thing general purpose programming > languages must have is extensibility, and that J lacks. > > I'm trying to work out what the appropriate use cases are for J, and I > think it's calculating with tensors. If you need more than tensors, or if > you need more than calculation (e.g. GUIs), J is not a good choice. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
