On Sat, March 17, 2012 8:45 pm, David Ward Lambert wrote: > In this experiment the tacit expression runs faster in less space than > the explicit verb. > > Question, Is 13 : > 1) an educational tool? > 2) lazy way to not bother choosing 3 : or 4 : ? > 3) or is there a performance benefit to tacit expression?
A Tool of Thought. One of the great benefits of tacit or functional programming, in particular highly modular programming without side effects, is that the code is much easier to understand and maintain, in much the same way that code without gotos, or without explicit looping, or without explicit pointers is easier to understand and maintain than code that includes those misfeatures. To say nothing of self-modifying code such as the COBOL ALTER verb. Except when the code to create tacit verbs from explicit definitions is itself buggy. > ts=: 6!:2, 7!:2@] NB. time space > > implicit=: 13 :'x +/ y * x + x * y - 3' > explicit=: 4 :'x +/ y * x + x * y - 3' > > 999 ts '34 explicit 8' > 1.35355e_5 5632 > 999 ts '34 implicit 8' > 8.58358e_6 2176 > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
