Hi Jane, I do not have a great deal of experience with APL, so be sure to take my answers with several grains of salt.
For many of your questions, the answers (far better than I could supply) are found in the wiki J4APL http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Doc/J4APL You may have more questions after you have a look at that document, in which case ask away. The question of whether APL and J are niche languages is an interesting one. I think that the array languages in general are not known by as many programmers as the more common declarative languages such as Python, Java, C, etc. On the other hand, the programmers that do know these languages are doing an awful lot of work in some key areas of the economy, such as finances and big data applications. Although these uses may make some think these languages are niche, I think that the more general reason that programmers should be aware of array languages is that they open you to a different approach to problem solving. Sadly, in this sense I think that they do remain niche languages to the majority of programmers. For your question on Object Oriented, you may want to look at the Labs on Locales and OOP (in that order). They show that J has object oriented capabilities, although I am not sure that this is always the most effective solution. In any case, that is about all I have for tonight. Hopefully the information is useful and I am sure that others will pipe in regarding my limited understanding of how J and APL fit into the programming world. Cheers, bob ps. my experience is that toddlers ask the best questions. I aspire to be a toddler! > On May 16, 2018, at 8:27 PM, jane dalley <[email protected]> wrote: > > This is my first post; my hope is this is an appropriate question. > > My knowledge of APL and J is very limited so my expectation is a simple > answer that is within my limited ability to grasp. > > Examples: > > How similar are both APL and J? > > To the best of my recollection APL could be written with EBCDIC so why J? > > Can APL do everything J can do and visa versa? > > Can APL and J be forced to be strongly typed? > > Are APL and J capable of being Object Oriented like C++ or C#? > > Would one view J as a superset of APL? > > Are J and APL more than niche languages? > > Sorry if any of these questions are perceived to be offensive, probably they > have been asked many times before. > > Sorry also if these questions are deemed silly such as a toddler might ask. > > Regards, > > Jane the novice of J > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
