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about
Personal blog · wjmn.github.io/postsprogramming
about is a personal blog at wjmn.github.io about programming. Since 2019, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “J can look like APL or English (2019)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog's post on making J code look like APL, in threads about APL and J notation, symbol-based syntax, and programming font ligatures.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- J can look like APL or English (2019)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-03-30
What Hacker News says?
I've just barely begun learning about the APL languages, but I have this tab open that you might be interested in: https://wjmn.github.io/posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “Pocketlang”Submitted J can look like APL or English as a story · 153 points
HN discussionIt's not about terseness, it's about making easy to see patterns and what is going on. You probably learnt the distributive property in school: a*(b+c) = a*b + a*c Let's make that "more readable": equals(multiply(a, sum(b, c)), sum(multiply(a, b), multiply(a, c))) It's not about the terseness, I just don't see a clear pattern using the "readable" notation. But it is obvious when using symbols. You can find another i…
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “Learning APL”Submitted J can look like APL or English (2019) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://wjmn.github.io/posts/j-can-look-like-apl/ uses Emacs. Discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20728715
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “Ligatures in programming fonts: hell no (2019)”Emacs-specific solution, but there is this[0] example of J and prettify-symbols-mode, the results look something like this: quicksort=: (($:@(<#[) , (=#[) , $:@(>#[)) ({~ ?@#)) ^: (1<#) quicksort ⤆ ((∇⍛(<#⊣) , (=#⊣) , ∇⍛(>#⊢)) ({⍨ ?⍛#))⍣(1<#) [0]: https://wjmn.github.io/posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “APL386 Unicode – An APL Font”At least one person [1] has played with using APL symbols in J, at least at the display level. I gave it a try, but was surprised to find that I preferred the ASCII version. Perhaps if J had its own custom symbol set (extended from APL?) it might have been better -- not all of the APL symbols have exactly the same meaning in J, and I remember finding some of the differences to be a bit jarring. For example, conjunct…
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “J for C Programmers”Not long ago there was a post about using English language instead of the J symbology[0] but the end result isn't meaningfully easier to understand because of all the prerequisite knowledge of how evaluation works etc., once you've worked that out most of the "line noise" has already sunk in. I think that's a big sticking point against creating a second "inflatable" notation - though there is always Nial[1] Not enti…
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “Determining an Election in K”https://wjmn.github.io/posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
Comment linking /posts/j-can-look-like-apl/
on “Random walk in 2 lines of J”