OK, I'll give the questions a go, too, bearing in mind that I am not a power user, just a J dilettante.
How similar? - About as similar as Lua and Javascript :) !!! They may look completely different on the surface and are used differently but the underlying ideas and the paradigm (mindset required) are practically identical. Re EBCDIC - Don't really know, but as someone (Don?) already said, EBCDIC was no remedy in that case either. Anyways motivation-wise the character set was probably quite low in priority. Can they do the same things? - Er hm, get the same results? Yes. The same way? Not quite, only sometimes. Plus, I don't think APL has implicit functions. (Correct me if I'm wrong) Typing - You're kidding, right? OOP - No idea about modern APLs. J has a way of doing it, but every time I tried using it I ended up swearing. Good job I don't do programming-in-the-large in J. I'm sure you could get used to the system though, just not sure if you would like it. Stick to Java if you want traditional OOP, you could always call J from a library, I suppose. Supersets - Already answered I think. Once, perhaps. No more, due to progress. Niche - Depends on your niche. I suspect their importance is quite high in the refined realms of the big players, math quants and such. So definitely not "niche" economically. I have to say, I mainly write in Clojure or Scheme but I often see the J style of thinking creeping in. Which I like! > On 17 May 2018 at 04:27 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
