On Wed, 06 Feb 2008 01:55:32 -600, PackRat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The problem with J's current documentation is that it tells in great > detail what each verb *does*, but it doesn't indicate *why* that's > useful or what it might be used for.
In my experience, once you have picked an application domain, you can treat most of the domain' specific issues with half a dozen to a dozen J verbs. This means that most of J is not useful within that domain. Of course, different domains wind up using different verbs, and also different people use different approaches. But the "real why" rests more in the realm of tensor algebra, and other mathematical topics. > That's where more examples (and explanations) come in. Well... J comes with a variety of books and a great many examples. The dictionary is meant to be a reference work, not a tutorial, but these other books adopt different approaches. And then you haev J's labs, which also present a wide variety of examples. I am not sure if you are not aware of these resources, or if you are objecting to their character or something else? > I'm not seeking exhaustiveness but, rather, > typical uses of the verbs, etc., in "real life" numeric *and* textual > situations (current examples are heavy on numbers). We already have lots of numeric examples, and I think you should be more specific about what we lack there. We probably could use some tutorial work on text processing with J. We do have labs on huffman coding and sequential machines, and two on regular expressions, but not much else. Henry's J for C Programmers book would also give some insight there, but does not really have text processing as a focus. Some of J's phrase book would probably be useful, though that is rather dense and the naming convention mostly is not very helpful. And so on... we have room for improvement there. But if you are not aware of any of these resources, I think you should poke around. You will probably find more than you can absorb in a day, a month or even a year. -- Raul even there w The examples I'm > talking about wouldn't necessarily emphasize the mechanics of J > (although that's obviously important in examples, too, and is pretty > much what the current documentation does) but more the *creativity* > involved in J, how these verbs, etc., have *practical* use, not just > theoretical beauty. (And let me say that I very much appreciate and > enjoy seeing the cleverness and elegance in the programming forum!) > > In answer to your question, I'd find it interesting, but I don't know > anywhere near enough to be even somewhat helpful at this point. What > more expert users (those have used and are quite familiar with all the > verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, etc.) might try is to ask the question > for *every* verb, etc.: "Why in the world would anyone ever use this > verb (etc.)?" It's the same question you'd use with commands in *any* > programming language to generate examples to use in learning the > language. Additionally, for each verb (etc.), you might ask, "What > other verb(s) or adverb(s) (etc.) is this useful in combination with?" > (The latter question, of course, has some relationship with "J > Phrases".) In any case, this second question can help generate further > examples as well as variations on examples. > > > Harvey > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
