As much as I've complained about J in these forums I've been having a
good time translating some simple code into J. Someone gave me wise
advice, to stick with explicit definitions until I know the language
well, which advice I have cordially ignored because I'm having too much
fun playing code golf with tacit tangles.
I was fascinated by J because it seemed to try to build on aspects of
the human linguistic system. Natural language unfolds in one dimension,
time, so everything relevant to understanding a particular word in a
sentence either came before it or is yet to come. J seemed to emulate
this by having verbs which relate directly only to objects on the
immediate left and immediate right. Moreover J seemed to be following a
linguistic paradigm in have nouns which are inert, verbs that act on
nouns, and adverbs which modify objects. This seemed like a promising
way to exploit humans' natural linguistic capabilities.
But maybe that's not way the J community currently sees J. Do you love
J most because of (pick only one)
1. the NL inspired syntax;
2. the suite of array utilities;
3. the concision of J code;
4. its being open-source; or
5. _____________________?
I've come to feel that all programming languages are ugly compromises
that are about equally good/bad at solving practical problems, and the
"best" language is just the one you know the best. I used to be
contemptuous of Perl, but after having learned it well enough for my
purposes I now kind of enjoy the brain teaser quality of trying to fit
problems into its procrustean bed (although I still think it's a silly
language). I have no doubt that I could live happily with J as my
primary language, but only after an extended period of being handcuffed
to it and forced to assimilate its quirks. I don't know that I'll have
the patience for that.
Is there any project in the J repos that demonstrates the strength of J,
as opposed to just showing that it's at least as good as other
languages? Any project that would have been significantly harder to
complete with say Python? Does J have any killer advantage, even in
just one aspect of programming? Or does J just appeal to you the way
pistachio ice-cream might, it just tickles your palate in a
no-accounting-for-taste way? That's how it appeals to me.
I was hoping someone could talk me into studying J seriously, but now it
looks to me like a language which, with APL, has had enormous beneficial
influence on many other languages, but which has failed to learn in its
turn from them. J seems a tad solipsistic.
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