[wellylug] Non-standard languages on Linux

Cliff Pratt enkidu at cliffp.com
Wed May 11 09:16:35 NZST 2005


Bret Comstock Waldow wrote:
 >
 > APL and (I think) Haskell are good for processing information
 > with minimal code, but it's been quite a while since I wrote
 > APL, and I've only been reading a bit about Haskell.
> 
> But it's easier to say things in APL than in C or Java. 
 > Closer to the conceptual flow.  Unfortunately, no one pays me
 > to use Haskell or LISP.
>
APL? It's been getting on for 20 years since I wrote any 
APL. That's the language with the funny character set isn't it?

I once had the only functioning APL compiler/interpreter for 
APL on the IBM mainframe. The one supplied by IBM (written 
in APL) didn't work, and I fixed it. IBM came and asked me 
for the code changes to make it work!

We had an APL guru visit from the States once. He announced 
the latest and greatest which was ... roll of drums ... a 
way of incorporating chunks of pre-compiled code into your 
program! You could share your programs with others!

He wasn't too happy when I pointed out that other languages 
had been using shared code libraries for years!

Cheers,

Cliff




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