---Randy MacDonald wrote: > (I'll leave the irony of non-programmers thinking they can > get a handle on a programming language aside.)
Surely programmers have to come from somewhere?! > How do they explain their confusion, if not as a sign they could use > some tools to look deeper? > > I also am thinking that $x is too basic and too important a > concept that really shouldn't wait for spontaneous discovery. > 'What is its shape?' seems like something an instructor would > use to cue students. I'm sure any J/APL course would deal with the concept of shape/rank explicitly, however that doesn't mean the student will immediately recognise from then on when to expect a list vs a single row table. If display colour of an array in the session could be configured based on its rank, I think that would be a nice visual clue to remind the student (or even programmer!) that a result may not be what they expected. I imagine it may well circumvent a good deal of frustration at times. As for "where does it end?", given that this would be user-configurable (exactly as it is currently user-configurable to show verbs vs nouns vs adverbs in a different colour), you can decide yourself where it ends. > Henry Rich wrote: > > These are non-programmers who have no idea that they need > > to dissect anything. Getting $x to occur to the average student > > would be far too much to hope for. > > > > Let the user specify as many colors as he cares to. As many > > different ranks can be distinguished as her heart desires. > > > > No way to tell the rank of an empty, but the rest is worth doing. > > > >---Randy MacDonald wrote: > >> An interesting idea, but where does it end? Do we need to > >> immediately > >> see the difference between, for example, i. 2 2 and i. 1 1 1 > >> 2 2 which > >> both have the same display value. Is $x too much of a bother for > >> students who need to dissect a value? I sure hope not. > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
