I suspect that a glossary of J (and related programming terms) would help a great deal. Or does one exist?
> On Feb 9, 2014, at 1:30 AM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> wrote: > > I was looking over NuVoc the other day, and thinking how it helped me learn > the J primitives. My next thought was how I wished that we could fix the J > search engine so that when newbies searched for stuff in the J wiki using > traditional programming lingo, they would automatically find the J > equivalent functions. > > When J gave new names to all the J programming elements, it was all for > good reasons. However that made it really hard to learn J by searching the > wiki for programming concepts, using common programming names. When I am > programming in J, I often come to a point where I know what I want to do, > and I know what most other programming languages would call what I want to > do. If I search for that name in the J wiki though, I usually come up > empty-handed. > > What we really need in NuVoc, as well as all of the J doc, is a set of > common-use keywords attached to every J concept. Thus if a newbie searches > for "assignment", he will get the vocabulary and dictionary pages for Is > (local) and Is (global), When he searches for "indexing" he will get the > Catalog pages. I could go on like this for quite awhile. > > Also when newbies or anyone stumbles upon a new concept in any of the J > doc, we should make it easy for that person to add new keywords to that doc > page. Hopefully the keywords they add will make it easier for the next > person to find that concept in the future. > > So my proposal is that each NuVoc page (and all J doc pages for that > matter) needs a list of keywords at (say) the bottom of the page, giving > common programming names for the J concept on that page. In that way, a > newbie searching for "assignment" would at least have a chance of finding > what he is looking for. > > However, my idea is more that just putting a list of keywords on every doc > page, As has been discussed on the J mail list, Newbies who are trying to > learn J, know what they are looking for, when they search for a particular > concept. What If we could make it so when someone finally does find what > they were looking for, they could easily add words to the keyword list on > the doc page they found. They could add the words that they were using to > (unsuccessfully) search for that concept. Then each doc page would start to > collect keywords that people commonly use for that concept, making it much > easier for newbies (and even casual J user oldies like me) to find that > concept in the future. > > There needs to be an easy (but controlled, and perhaps curated) way to put > a new keyword on any doc page, while that page is being viewed. There needs > to be a brief statement above the keyword block explaining what it is, how > to add a keyword, and why one should do it. > > I believe that in the long run, this keyword scheme could have a bigger > impact on reducing the "steep learning curve" of J than almost any other > documentation mechanism. > > Skip > > Skip Cave > Cave Consulting LLC > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
