APL\360

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 15 Jan 2021, Nemo Nusquam via cctalk wrote:
> As a grad student, I still remember the row of APL terminals at the computer 
> centre with their APL-specific keyboards, always ruing that I had no time to 
> learn it.

I guess that I was lucky?

At GSFC, I was in an entry level job ("Data Technician"), having EAM 
experience and some FORTRAN, being paid as a go-fer, but being expected to 
learn and do more and more stuff.  Such as simple FORTRAN to draw graphs 
on Calcomp plotters.

I had some calculations to do, and THE calculator (on a typewriter cart) 
was in use elsewhere.

One of my senior cow-orkers (a programmer) spent about a minute showing me 
that you could do routine arithmetic in APL.
So, it only took a few minutes before it was saving me time and effort.

After I was using it for calculator work for a little while, he came back 
and showed me how to write simple programs, and got me access to some 
manuals.

I was never GREAT, but I found it easy to learn new stuff in it.  I had 
been fascinated with matrix algebra in high school, and was thrilled to 
see some of the things that APL could do.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com