On 11/7/07, Devon McCormick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I believe the "mud" versus "diamond" comment was a reference to the quote > > APL is like a diamond. It has a beautiful crystal structure; all of its > parts are related in a uniform and elegant way. But if you try to extend > this structure in any way - even by adding another diamond - you get an ugly > kludge. LISP, on the other hand, is like a ball of mud. You can add any > amount of mud to it and it still looks like a ball of mud. (Joel Moses)
Ah, ok -- then I completely mis-understood that comment. If I now understand correctly, this comment is a reference to APL's treatment of computational algorithms (where it can be quite concise) in contrast with APL's treatment of other issues, such as UI (where you might need quite a bit of code to accomplish something which seems simple). I am not sure this is entirely avoidable, though I think improvemets could be made. Arthur Whitney has provided some examples: [1] His support for dictionary data types seems more concise than J's locales (though, granted, not as general). [2] His support for forms seems more concise than J's wd (though, again, my impression is that it's not as general). -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
