APL was a major breakthrough in computing. As mentioned earlier it provided a better link between people and computers than was available at the time. It allowed people to think arrays with computers as mathematicians do. It also formalized the concept of modifiers, a concept in mathematics not exploited then or even now by most programming languages.
But this thread is moving to the questions of GUI. In other words, it is more important to provide a glossy presentation of results than the reliability of the results. Now it is to the point on PCs that over 99.9% of processing time is accepting input and displaying results than on the problem. Present the results in a way that it is unnecessary for people to understand the problem being solved. On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 1:02 AM, Björn Helgason <gos...@gmail.com> wrote: > JHS is using HTML as a front end. > There are numerous ways of interacting with HTML tools. > You can see examples and demos doing gui/graphics etc and mixing with > javascripts. > It may be difficult to distinguish between what is J/Javascript. > > On 8 Jan 2018 22:13, "Dabrowski, Andrew John" <dabro...@indiana.edu> > 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 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
