WE AT SMECC  HAVE A VERY ODD  LITTLE  LAPTOP  THAT  HAS  APL IN  IT !    -  AND  SAVES  TO A BUILT IN TAPE CARTRIDGE!!   WHAT AN AMAZING  DEVICE  NEED  MORE  DOCS  ON IT  ---  APPARENTLY  A  SCARCE LITTLE  DEVIL! ED#   CHIEF  HOARDER  AND ARCHIVIST  AT  SMECC!    In a message dated 8/27/2020 12:01:26 AM US Mountain Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: 
Re:

> A great language, but notorious for being write-only;
>

Same way I describe it ... and I love APL!


>
> But using APL changes forever the way you think about problems ; take the
> classic production problem ...



> grammer will maybe produce a page of VBA. The ex-APL programmer will use a
> one-liner with MMULT, which encapsulates what was, for us back in the day,
> APL’s best party trick.


I'll echo Ron ... circa 1977 (when I was at Burroughs), I heard of an
internal programming competition at Burroughs Mission Viejo
(the equivalent of HP Cupertino).  A problem in spell checking a paper was
presented.  Answers were in ALGOL, COBOL, FORTRAN, and APL.
The APL one blew all the others away for speed (ALGOL a distant second).
The ALGOL programmer asked the APL programmer how it was done ... then
rewrote the ALGOL using a similar technique and was significantly faster
than the APL.
TL;DR: you think and program differently in APL!

Stan

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