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In Praise of APL (1977)

34 pointsby toshtoday at 8:44 AM20 commentsview on HN

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runekstoday at 11:16 AM

I find APL very difficult to read. Incidentally, I am told (by stack overflow) that the APL expression "A B C" can have at least four different meanings depending on context[1]. I suspect there's a connection here.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/75694187

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singularity2001today at 9:58 AM

Should be the ultimate final incomprehensible programming language for code agents

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misja111today at 10:17 AM

> The virtues of APL that strike the programmer most sharply are its terseness — complicated acts can be described briefly, its flexibility — there are a large number of ways to state even moderately complicated tasks (the language provides choices that match divergent views of algorithm construction), and its composability

I had an introduction to APL in university and what I absolutely hated was this terseness. I guess when you're a mathematician APL is more natural but to me, as a programmer, I much prefer to have some extra verbosity to make my code more (human-)readable.

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kholis_abtoday at 9:23 AM

i love APL, but never ever tried it ... only watched videos of code_report

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jaksdfkskftoday at 10:28 AM

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