A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012)
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HN comment orderThis is a really old blog of mine. I was so influenced by J I tried to do a startup in 2015/2016 making a more legible APL/TSDB. At present I'm more or less running a small cryptocurrency HF in J and using the J database engine jd.
The TSDB is now called 'jd'[0] FWIIW. Funny, I've been using J on and off since then and I'm still not sure if it's genius or insane. It, along with the other APLs, is definitely its own thing, just as much as Lisp is (my previous favorite weird language was Yann LeCun and Leon Bottou's "Lush,"[1] which I continue to think is an amazing design). Once you get a little bit proficient at it, you finally realize what an actually…
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- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 330
- Total comments
- 114
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-02-16 | A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012)First breakout · Best thread | jxub | 166 | 46 |
| 2020-08-16 | A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012)Latest 20+ point return | tosh | 159 | 68 |
| 2026-04-15 | A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012) | tosh | 5 | 0 |