
Dyalog APL v15.0 Free for Non-Commercial Use - jxy
http://www.dyalog.com/news/108/420/Dyalog-Ltd-Announces-Dyalog-Version-15-0.htm
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Athas
It's annoying that the "un-registered" version[0] (the one where you don't
have to fill out a form) only runs on Windows. I wonder why. I'm not really
sure what kind of danger Dyalog is trying to protect themselves from.

[0]: [http://www.dyalog.com/download-
zone/unregistered.htm](http://www.dyalog.com/download-zone/unregistered.htm)

~~~
jxy
It's a 32bit and from an old version. Perhaps they don't want to annoy their
paying customers? In this way they get more information from you. I guess it's
good for their marketing research. Hopefully they would conclude that it would
be better to make the software more freely available.

I'm not sure how big the market is for them or related array language. Seeing
J became essentially open source, and kdb+ released their 2nd grade 32bit for
non-commercial use too, I guess the industry is shifting toward more
consulting/training services.

------
gaze
So what's the trick to using APL if you don't have the keyboard? Do most
people use the custom keyboard? What about with laptops? Is there some sort of
mnemonic for what symbols correspond to what letters? Do people put stickers
over their keycaps?

EDIT: Guys I mean literally the keyboard. Once it's software it's easy. I
wanna know the best way to remember what key maps to what character.

~~~
sedachv
> So what's the trick to using APL if you don't have the keyboard?

Snarky answer is to use J.

I have this hope that on-screen tablet keyboards will bring APL back. It's one
of the few languages where you can actually be productive developing on a
tablet or phablet because it requires so little typing. As well the idea of
workspaces is something that would work well on modern phone OSes. Basically
the same things that made APL a great choice for early personal computers
(MCM/70 and IBM 5100 were both APL machines:
[http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/MCM_70_microcomputer.htm](http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/MCM_70_microcomputer.htm)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100))
would make it work on phones.

~~~
gaius
Or q or k :-)

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setra
As someone who took the dive and tried Dyalog APL I would recommend trying it
out. While it may look difficult, and annoying to learn you will find the
within a single coding session you can have a basic grasp of the language.
Typing on the keyboard may seem annoying, but you will be typing very little.
All of your programs will fit on one screen. Out of all of the current APL
implementations Dyalog APL is the best one. It is worth trying just for the
experience.

------
scrollaway
Meta: Where's the "free for non-commercial use" license? I'm curious about the
text.

If I did want to release a project as open source (not free software) under
"free for non-commercial use" terms, what would be a recommended license?
AFAIK none of the common open source licenses target this.

~~~
rspeer
I'm not sure which distinction exactly you're drawing between free software
and open source, but most open-source licenses don't aim to restrict how
people _use_ the software, for many reasons.

One reason is that it's just harsh. "Free for non-commercial use" means that
if someone builds on your software to make something successful, they can only
succeed on your terms. Sure, that may be what you want, but it's not what
users want if they're going to take the time to understand your code.

While such code may technically be open source, much like the "shared source"
initiatives of large software companies, the code won't be able to participate
in the larger open-source ecosystem. Would you expect someone else to
contribute to the code? Why would they? They'd be enriching your IP but they
wouldn't get any additional rights to the code, nor would they get revenues
from commercial licenses. Unless you hire them as an employee.

Also, restrictions on how you use the software violate the Debian Free
Software Guidelines. Indeed you indicated that you're not interested in "free
software", but you shouldn't expect to find "common open source licenses" that
violate the DFSG.

Restrictions on use tend to be more tolerated in creative works than they are
in software, in which case the license you're looking for is Creative Commons
By-NC-SA.

------
avmich
Did anybody analyze recently how effective and why is the set of primitives
chosen in APL?

If Iverson wouldn't be constrained by ASCII and still knew what we know today,
how he could design APL?

~~~
rbonvall
He already did:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_\(programming_language\))

 _The J programming language, developed in the early 1990s by Kenneth E.
Iverson and Roger Hui,[4][5] is a synthesis of APL (also by Iverson) and the
FP and FL function-level languages created by John Backus.[6]_

 _To avoid repeating the APL special-character problem, J uses only the basic
ASCII character set, resorting to the use of the dot and colon as
inflections[7] to form short words similar to digraphs._

~~~
avmich
Thanks. However, J was conceived in 1980-s, uses ASCII for ease of
communications, not as the best set of symbols. In this sense APL was somewhat
less constrained - symbols were new, even though some of them were typed on
teletypes with some tricks.

Looks like in case of J a lot of consideration was given to what's relatively
easy to do in terms of chosen set of symbols. The question is, if ASCII
wouldn't be a requirement, what would be a modern set of primitives, efficient
as the tool for thought. APL at the time was trying to extend - and improve -
mathematical notation, no less...

~~~
jxy
> The question is, if ASCII wouldn't be a requirement, what would be a modern
> set of primitives, efficient as the tool for thought.

I love this question.

Moving from APL to J is really a step backward in terms of notation. With
unicode standard flourishing, we might finally see something that can improve
upon the mathematical notation we use and make instructing computers easier. I
don't think anyone would be able to answer though… Perhaps one could extend
APL symbols to cover all of the J primitives?

~~~
avmich
I'm trying to find out - is APL set of symbols looks justified today, even
with Unicode capabilities?

If yes then Iverson created really well thought out set which stood the test
of time and we can hope will continue to efficiently serve as a good notation
- and might be may be extended. If not - then we have the question of what
would be a good notation.

References to math notation, which developed over decades and centuries, are
good - but sometimes look like not perfect. Iverson was trying to make it
better - for example, put the notation in one line, get rid of operation
priorities. Is that a success from today's point of view?

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pepijndevos
Forgive my ignorance, but who is buying proprietary language
interpreters/compilers these days?

What are some other successful examples of this? I remember ChezScheme became
free recently.

~~~
Avshalom
MATLAB, Mathematica, Maple, Labview, IDL, wasn't there an article here that R
just recently passed S+? Turns out scientists and engineers are still willing
to pay for tools.

~~~
pepijndevos
Oh yea. I actually have 3 of those installed since my university has free
student licenses. I'd never have considered buying them, but maybe after
several years of use, I can imagine my future employer paying for it.

I hate Labview with a passion(needed for data acquisition in labs), I barely
use Mathematica, and I'd be fine with using Scipy over Matlab, but Matlab is
actually nice for quickly doing some analysis and graphs.

~~~
adrianN
Have you tried Octave?

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wmccullough
This is a nice website by 1995 standards.

~~~
zeveb
Actually, I think it's a very pretty site: it says what it needs to say, it
has attractive colours, it uses my browser window sanely, it's not
distracting. What's not to like? I wish that more websites were like that.

~~~
xyience
And it works great with NoScript. What a breath of fresh air from the SPA
stuff I work around every day.

