In Praise of APL (1977)

> I am firmly convinced that APL and LISP are related to each other along an important axis of language design and that acquiring simultaneous expertise in both languages is possible and desirable for the beginning student. Were they unified, the set of tasks that succumb to terse, flexible and expressive descriptions will enlarge enormously without overly increasing the intellectual burden on the student over his initial 16 week contact period. In the context of setting the objectives for education…

One of my list of dream projects that I might never have time to do, and so feel free to "steal" the idea, would be a eink notepad in where you could code in APL or similar. APL was born as a mathematical notation, pertaining to the blackboard, so it makes sense to write it using a writing implement. Its terseness would make it ideal for the handwriting world, it's REPL implementation would give quick feedback loops, you could move…

I posted this link [1] a few days ago on another thread. It is very relevant here. Yes, APL was an amazing language. It was also way ahead of it's time. The technology wasn't quite ready for it back then. One can only wonder what might have happened had it been introduced thirty years later. The language simply didn't have an opportunity to evolve and mutate into something that could be pretty amazing by today's standards. If you've never used…