3 Jan
2012
3 Jan
'12
7:42 p.m.
On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Neil Lincoln once told me that he thought that APL was
the perfect
language to introduce one to programming. He said his kids took to
it like ducks to water.
It does have a few specific items that work for beginners, such as use of
an arrow for the assignment operation leminates the beginner mistake of
3 = X
(I think that for first day programmers (which actually translates to
almost a semester!), that "LET . . . " helped convey the difference
between assginemtn and equality.)
All of the bizarre hieroglyphic characters in APL are FUN!
One can readily see the popularity of this idea by the
vast amount of
APL code to be seen on the Web...
I don't see much matrix manipulation software on the Web in ANY language.
I think that the character set killed APL. Just the special type ball and
pieces of tape on the keys.
But, I've actually had students ask why there isn't a "plus or minus",
or
a "not equal" character for use in C if() statements. So, I pass a VT100
keyboard around the room.