The JSoftware site has a tremendous amount of useful information on it, probably more than most programming language sites. However, it is just incredibly difficult to find information that one needs relevant to a specific issue.
The "Getting Started" set of articles on the JSoftware site is a good way to introduce a newbie to the language, but most newbies won't want to plow through the complete set of docs suggested on those pages. A typical programmer will read some of the overview docs, and then start searching for topics relevant to a specific problem they want to solve. That's when they get into trouble. There are several reasons for this. A major problem is the semantics that J uses. J semantics (eg. noun, verb, rank, hook, fork) are markedly different than other programming languages. So when a newbie searches for typical programming issues (function, subroutine, class, etc.) he is met with an uncomprehending "blank stare" from the Wiki, as the search returns minimal, mostly confusing, results. Also, It is the nature of the Wiki mechanism that there is no strong, central organizing scheme. The J Wiki has contributions from many authors, who often have different ideas on how their submissions are titled and categorized. This means that articles on similar topics can be in completely different sections, with very different titles. A good example of this is if you type in "FAQ" in the search box, the first article tells you how to create a FAQ in the Wiki. I posted this to start a discussion on how we can improve this issue. I have some ideas, which I will present in another post. I have a meeting to attend now. -- Skip Cave Cave Consulting LLC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
