A GCC COBOL status report

Posted Feb 11, 2023 2:35 UTC (Sat) by donbarry (guest, #10485)
In reply to: A GCC COBOL status report by ejr
Parent article: A GCC COBOL status report

J and K are "parallel inspirations" you might say but in different directions. J was the work of the original designer of APL, Turing award winner Kenneth Iverson, in his last years. The implementation drew from the advice and work of Arthur Whitney, the designer of A+, K, and q, all inspired by APL. You might call them semi-intelligible dialects of one another, but Iverson's APL is the root of the tree.

If only J had become the "numpy engine" of Python. There would be a powerful combination. Instead numpy drew from Matlab, which copied a handful of features from APL -- badly -- and threw away the rest.

A GCC COBOL status report

Posted Feb 11, 2023 18:09 UTC (Sat) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link]

IIRC, Cleve didn't know APL when he started his "FORTRAN interpreter". But agreed. I was able to learn APL2 in high school (late 80s), and it poisoned me for life. Ah, working on a PS/2 model 50 (yes, *that* burninating one) with the keyboard layout card just above the keyboard...

Numpy did draw from APL in a few ways. Designing these language/library systems is a pile of nasty trade-offs. Anyone else remember yorick?

Still pissed as USPS for losing my box containing Iverson's "A Programming Language," a first-ed K&R, and more.

Morgan-Stanley isn't as into A+ any more, alas. At least that's what I've gathered from recent conversations, but I could well be talking to a different slice.