Really? It is now such an ungainly language i doubt even its
description could be fit in 8K. Bill Gates APL is afaik and most other
folks was entirely mythological. Perhaps Mr Gates was a far better
lawyer than programmer:-)

K was a real language though. i only use the past tense as it is not
available, now, as a separate product: one must get Q (which is
Arthurs styling of SQL) K was, and still is, the underlying
implementation of Q and one could and can always escape to it.

The Wall St mavens it was sold to liked and used the retrieval aspect
for much more worth than its language aspect.

A language based on APL and Scheme is quite doable (and we have
excellent existence proof in K). That language can take up very little
space as the simpler and language is the less space required for its
implementation - but that says nothing about its power.

K with a full OS and IO would be relatively easy to implement on a
small machine. And quite possible given the access to all the widgets
that Linux does.

Perhaps you are too young to have participated in the colloquy
involving J and K? Thought you were older than that. In any case Ken
and Arthur go way back. Arthur made the language APL+, which is
available now as freeware, and was in the discussion on the
foundations of J. He wrote a one page program for the rudiments of J -
that Roger studied for the design of J. i forget what it was called,
the incunabulum? Someone help me out. In any case there is a URL where
that fragment still exists.

Personally i believe that J is going in a direction which i do not
believe is fully optimal for web use. Fine for mathematicians and
standalone usage. i would like to see a language, with the array
manipulation capabilities of APL, be written in Javascript and small.
Then it can be downloaded and used almost universally. But there is
much research and implementation going on in this big world, eg bondi,
fish, etc http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3695
http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~cbj/Publications/shapes.html

~greg
krsnadas.org

--

from    Oleg Kobchenko <[email protected]>
to      General forum <[email protected]>
date    28 February 2010 02:45
subject Re: [Jgeneral] Newbie musings 1: Pocket PCs

... And Bill Gates's BASIC used to fit in 8k.

What does it have to do with Pocket PC?

--

from    greg heil <[email protected]>
to      General forum <[email protected]>
date    25 February 2010 20:47
subject Re: [Jgeneral] Newbie musings 1: Pocket PCs

k is based on scheme and apl
it uses less symbols than j to express something,
runs ragged arrays which j does not,
and fits on a floppy ... with IO & OS

~greg
krsnadas.org
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