Comment by throwaway7645 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway7645 | Hacker News Reader

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Yea, I was just saying the key mappings can be a pain and your favorite keyboard probably doesn't have the APL symbols on it. The Dyalog IDE has a virtual keyboard, but I don't like those too much. If none of that bothers you, than no biggie. I'm guessing Dyalog has more production users and a bit more users than you see at the conference as they are typically held in the UK. J is free, so I bet a lot more people try it even though Dyalog has a free hobby license. J has a nice built in plotting library"viewmat" while Dyalog has sharpleaf. Both are nice, but sharpleaf has a GUI like doing charts in Excel. Dyalog can easily hook-in to .NET, so that is pretty helpful on Windows in the real-world. I'd agree it's a wash right now. What is your background and needs?

My background is I know too many languages and don't get enough shit done and my need is probably to stop it and get back to work. :)

Being slightly more serious, I do web dev, mostly backend, for a radio astronomy observatory. I don't know anything about the science, but I wind up executing their routines in the cluster and doing typical database apps. I don't have much time on the side but I have been enjoying trying to learn J and realizing how much applied math is missing in my background!

I also dabble in Dyalog APL. I have an inexplicable bias for the symbols, however I really like J and the commmunity. I have played with Jd with a trial license, and as said above, J is free and the source is available for scrutiny. I have played with using the J DLLs in my C code. I am always amazed at my takeaway understanding of a mathematics problem after working it out in J. It somehow gels it in my mind, and fits with the equations in normal math symbols.

I am one of those who stare at arrays! [1]

  [1]  http://www.aprogramminglanguage.com/

I like the APL symbols, but I think we could probably do better today, since we're not as limited by what we can come up with using overstriking.

Probably, but like Cuneiform's wedge-shaped marks, it brings an easy familiarity to a line or lines of text or code. It would be cool to make APl in Vulcan or Predator symbols!

Haha...I'm in the same boat and need to stick with one.

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