
A Programming Language (1962) [pdf] - tosh
http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Books/APROGRAMMING%20LANGUAGE
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benji-york
Every time APL is mentioned I feel compelled to post this captivating video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4)

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agumonkey
My favorite (so far) is Aaron Hsu
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Mt0GYHU9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Mt0GYHU9A)

because it pokes hard at OOP culture.

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6thaccount2
Yea. His discussions on HN (user arcfide) are well worth reading.

Some users thought his compiler was a farce before he posted the stats. Yea
it's just a few pages, but the magic is getting to just a few pages. It
apparently took 4M loc of added and then deleted code to get there (iirc it
was a huge number).

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agumonkey
he made a few videos about apl too, parallel tree processing.. I like his
subjects of discourse. I wish I could work (or intern~) with him.

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mruts
If anyone is interested in APL, I would recommend trying out kdb+/q. The
personal version is free (no charge): [https://kx.com/connect-with-
us/download/](https://kx.com/connect-with-us/download/)

It integrates an APL-like language (q) with a very nice time-series database
(kdb+). Q programmers are highly prized on Wall St and can pull in truly
staggering salaries.

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thelazydogsback
I remember being snowed in and having nothing to read but back issues of
QuoteQuad -- it was glorious :) Also APL for the TRS-80 Model I, despite not
being able to show the APL charset (without a Graphtrax programmable character
generator) was quite cool in exposing people to a language a bit off the
beaten BASIC path that most were exposed to.

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gtani
I've been looking for a while for a copy of the original red Plivka/Pakin APL
book (not the APL2 one, even tho APL2 is what i know best), and they're there
now on amazon, under $10.

Now i can relive the arguments about whether Sharp, STSC or APL2 was best

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13of40
I love how it's published by Wiley and Sons. It reminds me of that episode of
Different Strokes where someone asks the old rich patriarch how he got his
wealth, and he says [paraphrased], "You know all that oil they got in the
Middle East? Well someone has to sell them the barrels!"

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robbrown451
I'm confused, is the word "A" the name of the language which is a predecessor
to C, or was it just intended as the article "a"? As in, "Here's a programming
language."

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shakna
A Programming Language is the book title. The language it describes came to be
known as "APL" [0], but the author didn't explicitly name it that way in the
book.

The language "A" was created to replace APL.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_\(programming_language\))

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jboy55
tryapl.org if you are curious to try your hand at programming in it.

~~~
Avshalom
Supports jupyter notebooks now too for what ever that's worth.

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6thaccount2
Dyalog APL in general supports a lot of old and new technology from
interacting with R & Python to Jupyter Notebooks, ODBC, .NET, COM, DDE,
Parallel multicore functions, graphics, multiplatform IDE, GPU support via
Aaron Hsu's compiler, functional programming via DFNS & Tacit Function
Trains...etc

If it was free I'd probably be using it.

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xellisx
Could have put PDF in the title...

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dang
Added now.

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drfuchs
APL is the true origin of the phrase “write-only code.”

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haolez
In my very brief experience, I find APL easier to read than J (although J
looks more interesting feature-wise). Maybe the symbols help after all.

