Arthur Fuller
fuller.artful at gmail.com
Tue May 22 18:52:46 CDT 2007
Marty, APL may be 50 years old but I am 60, and I pray that you won't toss me into the dustbin just because of that. APL is WAY powerful. Weird, to be sure. But you can express in about a dozen characters what would require 100 or 1000 lines in many other languages. Matrix multiplication, for example, is trivial in apl. And as you mentioned, complex math (by which I assume you intended complex numbers) are equally trivial to express. About 5 characters says it all. Of course, these characters are not readily available on the standard keyboard, without an overlay, but that's beside the point. APL can do things that make C look positively verbose, and that's no cheap trick. I have not exactly worked with APL but have documented some reasonably complex APL programs, and been totally wowed by the concision of the syntax. Like regex but for math not strings. Awesome language, IMHO. A dotNet version of same is a very intriguing possibility. Not to be investigated by me immediately. At the moment I'm having a lot of fun learning WSH. I thought it was going to be a slow learn, but you'd be amazed how well such languages as VBA prepare you for such a new turf. In fact, it doesn't even feel new. It's everything I already learned, cast in a slightly new shadow. APL is a different kettle of fish. If you're not deep into math, then what it can do will probably sail way over your head. But if you need math, and matrices, etc., APL still stands, lo these many years later, as perhaps the most optimal language. IMHO. I don't profess expertise, to be sure, but I've documented some APL apps, and looked at 6 lines of code, and thought, that would take 1000 lines in some other language I know. I will visit this site immediately and grab their thingie. This excites me! I like math. Not everyone does. That's ok. A. On 5/22/07, MartyConnelly <martyconnelly at shaw.ca> wrote: > > For you Ken Iverson fans out there and have an APL keyboard > (It looks like a two year old threw up spaghettios on it) > I know the APL language is almost 50 years old but it was the first > one that I learned, which accounts for my code. > But it is the one language I would use for complex math especially > financial economics or engineering structural analysis. > For example to find the determinant of a matrix only requires > a one character symbol "Rho" > > However to write the complex math libraries that accompany APL > would take months in VBA or Vb.Net but since they may be written > in a CLR form, they should be callable from Access. I'll have to test. > > Anyway a free Express form of APL.Net is available via a sign-up from > APLNext > > http://www.visualapl.com/VisualAPL/features/goexpress/Default.aspx > > -- > Marty Connelly > Victoria, B.C. > Canada > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com >