Yep ... As Abrams pointed out, "Beating" should be pronounced "Bee-Ating" because it was a "promotion scheme" that reminded him of the beatification process in the path towards sainthood ...
Cheers, Alan ________________________________ From: David Leibs <david.le...@oracle.com> To: Fundamentals of New Computing <fonc@vpri.org> Sent: Sun, June 5, 2011 9:59:33 PM Subject: Re: Terseness, precedence, deprogramming (was Re: [fonc] languages) Alan, Your memory for great dissertations is amazing. I don't think the Phil Abrams APL machine was ever actually built but It had some really good techniques for making APL efficient colorfully named "beating" and "drag-along". -djl On Jun 5, 2011, at 7:50 PM, Alan Kay wrote: I think this one was derived from Phil Abrams' Stanford (and SLAC) PhD thesis on dynamic analysis and optimization of APL -- a very nice piece of work! (Maybe in the early 70s or late 60s?) > >Cheers, > >Alan > > > > ________________________________ From: David Pennell <pennell.da...@gmail.com> >To: Fundamentals of New Computing <fonc@vpri.org> >Sent: Sun, June 5, 2011 7:33:40 PM >Subject: Re: Terseness, precedence, deprogramming (was Re: [fonc] languages) > >HP had a version of APL in the early 80's that included "structured" >conditional >statements and where performance didn't depend on cramming your entire program >into one line of code. Between the two, it was possible to create reasonably >readable code. That version of APl also did some clever performance >optimizations by manipulating array descriptors instead just using brute force. > > >APL was the first language other than Fortran that I learned - very eye opening. > > > >-david > > >On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Alan Kay <alan.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >Hi David >> >>I've always been very fond of APL also -- and a slightly better and more >>readable syntax could be devised these days now that things don't have to be >>squeezed onto an IBM Selectric golfball ... >> >>Cheers, >> >>Alan >> >> >> >> ________________________________ From: David Leibs <david.le...@oracle.com> >>To: Fundamentals of New Computing <fonc@vpri.org> >>Sent: Sun, June 5, 2011 7:06:55 PM >>Subject: Re: Terseness, precedence, deprogramming (was Re: [fonc] languages) >> >> >>I love APL! Learning APL is really all about learning the idioms and how to >>apply them. This takes quite a lot of training time. Doing this kind of >>training will change the way you think. >> >> >>Alan Perlis quote: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about >>programming, is not worth knowing." >> >> >>There is some old analysis out there that indicates that APL is naturally >>very >>parallel. Willhoft-1991 claimed that 94 of the 101 primitives operations in >>APL2 could be implemented in parallel and that 40-50% of APL code in real >>applications was naturally parallel. >> >> >>R. G. Willhoft, Parallel expression in the apl2 language, IBM Syst. J. 30 >>(1991), no. 4, 498–512. >> >> >> >> >>-David Leibs >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>fonc mailing list >>fonc@vpri.org >>http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >> >> >_______________________________________________ >fonc mailing list >fonc@vpri.org >http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >
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