Disclaimer: While I am currently employed by IBM, APL is *NOT* something
I've ever dealt with within IBM. My experience w/ APL was on Xerox Sigma-9
systems running CP-V (and I didn't have the right typeball so it wasn't a
lot of fun).
That disclaimer being said, APL is a VERY powerful and expressive language
which makes it easy for a practitioner to write functional code.
So is Perl. And, IIRC, LISP. There are others, of course, but none
immediately come to mind. (I suspect we can have a contest to name
languages that are even MORE write-only... to me, RPG is W/O but that's
only because I don't know it.)
The problem *I* saw was that APL's structure doesn't make "clear and
concise" documentation easy because of it's expressiveness and subtlety.
Expressive languages that allow great compression of thought are much
harder to adequately explain to others; APL, like LISP (and a lot of Perl
code I've perused) appears to be a write-only language... and I suspect
any language as expressive will suffer the same fate. The skill level
required to *read* such code goes up (and up).
APL is certainly not alone in having been called write-only; any language
can be rendered write-only (even COBOL!) but the facilities to provide
adequate commentary are, as I dimly recall, not "simple". Given the
compression the expressiveness of the language, it strikes me that it'd
need 100 lines of commentary to explain one line of actual code. (OK, so
I'm exaggerating.)
(I will admit that reasonably accurate and expressive commentary in Perl
inflates a module size but impressive factors. C isn't as expressive and
so doesn't inflate so quickly.)
That being said...
It was really cool to write stuff in. I've forgotten most of it over the
last 27+ years, of course...
Oh, yeah... about commentary... source code is not only how you talk to a
computer but is also how you talk to those who follow you in maintaining
code. Learning how to comment code to give the maintainer background in
*how* you were thinking and making a code block's raison d'etre clear by
explaining *why* it exists is not something that happens over-night.
As for PL/I? I'm probably gonna take a look. Thanks for the links.
--------------------
John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines (GNUrd) {813-356|697}-5322
Adsumo ergo raptus sum
MacOS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging
Windows.
Red Hat Certified Engineer (#803004680310286)
IBM Certified: IBM AIX 4.3 System Administration, System Support
----- Forwarded by John Campbell/Tampa/IBM on 07/08/2004 12:21 PM -----
Bernd Oppolzer
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-online.de> cc:
Sent by: Linux on Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] Progress on
PL/1 for Linux
390 Port
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]
IST.EDU>
07/08/2004 05:07
AM
Please respond to
Linux on 390 Port
APL is still heavily used by insurance companies to calculate their
non-standard insurances for large companies, where the normal routines
won't work due to special conditions etc.
APL development is very fast compared to other (compiled) languages.
I don't do it myself, but I am told so by lots of colleagues.
Regards
Bernd
Am Mit, 07 Jul 2004 schrieben Sie:
> Hello (again) from Gregg C Levine
> I know, I could feel the stirring all the way here.............<BG>
>
> Seriously though, what's wrong with APL? It's got a good history
> behind it, a good track record behind it. Granted it has a less then
> stellar acceptance record, and its syntax is strange, and the only use
> that I can remember was in the construction of the S/360, and S/370
> families.
> -------------------
> Gregg C Levine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> "The Force will be with you...Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
> "Use the Force, Luke." Obi-Wan Kenobi
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or
visit
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
