That was probably my fault. I tried to show him how I used J, not realizing that he had a very strong preference for a different style of coding.
:( -- Raul On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Jim Russell <jimsruss...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Someone recently linked to Ron Jeffery's blog re throwing in the towel on > learning J. I developed a respect for Ron back when I hung out on Ward > Cunningham's original Wiki. Ward once raved about J, even though he thought > he had fully "grok"ed it in a weekend or so. > > > On Feb 15, 2014, at 1:16 PM, Vijay Lulla <vijaylu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > I came across > > > http://waterstreetgm.org/throwing-in-the-towel-on-becomming-a-programmer/this > > on HN. And > > http://sdawncasey.wordpress.com/about/ in that page. Maybe these pages > > might be useful to consider how newcomers take to concepts. These pages > are > > fascinating to me because it shows that even though these people have had > > prior experience with other languages they claim that they still don't > > understand programming. IMO, the emphasis on concepts and how J/APL can > aid > > in these explorations is the best approach to teach programming. Actually > > Ken Iverson's explanation of Under (&.) [I read this on Ken Iverson's > > Quotations page] is one of the best explanations of a very commonly > > occurring programming idiom. > > > > > > On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 12:51 PM, robert therriault > > <bobtherria...@mac.com>wrote: > > > >> Hi Henry and Raul, > >> > >> I think that the audience being young programmers is a good start > towards > >> the issues that Raul raises. As an additional challenge, I think that we > >> would want to use an example that is user friendly once their interest > has > >> been attracted. There are some areas of J that have more overhanging > >> learning curves than others :) I don't think we would want to get them > >> interested and then send them into the teeth of image processing unless > we > >> also provided a good road map. > >> > >> Cheers, bob > >> > >>> On Feb 15, 2014, at 9:36 AM, Henry Rich <henryhr...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > >>> > >>> My idea about that is, we need to appeal to young programmers. The > more > >> experience people have with scalar languages, the less able they are to > >> learn J. The more experience they have with other languages in a class > >> with J, the less they need to learn J. > >>> > >>> The application needs to be of obvious interest to a non-mathematical, > >> non-financial user. My target would be a scientist/engineer/IT person > who > >> has a computation to perform and no canned package to do it, so they > have > >> to write a little code. > >>> > >>> Henry Rich > >>> > >>>> On 2/15/2014 12:30 PM, Raul Miller wrote: > >>>> Perhaps it is also worth noting that we are not going to impress > >> everyone, > >>>> nor should we want to. > >>>> > >>>> J currently caters to some high powered wallstreet types, high quality > >>>> engineering types and so on. But it's hardly the only language in use > >> for > >>>> any of those categories. > >>>> > >>>> ... anyways we should probably think a bit about qualities of the sort > >> of > >>>> people we think we want to attract with this video (or videos, since > we > >>>> might want to attract different kinds of people). > >>>> > >>>> I'd also be tempted to enlist Cathrine Lathwell's advice on video > >> creation > >>>> - she has more than a little relevant experience. > >>>> > >>>> Thanks, > >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >> > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
