On 6/21/07, Terrence Brannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So far, the Primer has been rather easy to follow. However, the chapter on atoms, cells, rank, frame, agreement is by necessity a mind-blower... because this is the meat of J in a large sense. Just as automatic inference is the meat of Prolog. And oo dispatch is the meat of Smalltalk. Understanding how verb rank, noun rank and result generation interplay is the first major step in Thinking in J.
Ok.
As a result, I do not think the suggested exercises at the end of that section - http://www.jsoftware.com/help/primer/checkpoint_e.htm are anywhere near thorough enough. Nor do they substantiate the initial assertion that learning a little J will let you do a lot.. yes, it will let me do a lot more with arrays of numbers with much less code that a C-like language. But what good does that do me in Corporate America?
Is this the right target for a primer? For example, should books on english contain a wrap-up chapter justifying how useful the language can be?
How about some realistic examples where the concepts of this chapter make it useful to solve some interesting real world problems.
This sounds like a plausible idea for a project. Not one that I, personally, want to spend time on, but maybe it's something that you would like to pursue?
Again, someone grill me on this entire section. And be sure to update the Primer so that no one goes on to the next thing until they are dead certain they have these concepts COLD.
This paragraph sounds like something that maybe could go into the primer. What would you think of as a good idea? [That said: I am not an author of the primer. Also, I subscribe to the school of thought that says if I'm having problems with a section I should go back and study the material leading up to that section.] -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
