

K and Software Engineering - silentbicycle
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8cckg/arthur_whitney_on_apl_k_q_and_elegant_code/c08ukiu

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balakk
I reckon a good number of us could be K5 refugees.. but for the remaining,
here's a nice overview of what K is capable of:

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/12/21757/8647>

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/4/12/21757/8647/33#33>

There're responses posted in various languages, for comparison.

I played with it for a while, but the brevity is a little daunting. To me at
least, a 100 line C# program and a 4 line K script takes equal amount of time
to parse.

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Qz
My dad uses J in his work (very similar to K), and it makes my head hurt just
looking at it. It's all ^^$:#//;"'3 or something...

He also makes junkloads of money with his J programs, so there's that.

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mark_h
I've heard that K is used a bit in the finance industry; is J in a similar
position?

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Qz
I'm not sure if it is generally, but he does use it for finance.

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mark_h
Thanks.

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mhd
Wow, that's a lot of hot air. Show me the code of a real-world K application
and then let's see. Preferably something that doesn't just do data mining,
e.g. a K version of the Java Pet Store.

Once you actually have to communicate the results of your clever algorithms,
things look slightly different.

The APL languages seem very suited to the constraints of the finance industry,
but that doesn't necessarily transfer a lot to other fields (number-heavy
science might benefit, too. But why would you write GMail in J/K/A+?)

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beagle3
<http://nsl.com/> (start with the "Tools" heading and go down).

A spreadsheet that works in 2 lines, and one that's significantly nontrivial
in 20. A database that works in 14 lines. A chat server. a 15-puzzle game.
Eliza. A simplifier for algebraic expressions.

All of them in extremely concise code, that you are going to ignore with a SEP
field.

You're welcome.

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mhd
Thanks. I do have to say that most of the programs you mentioned didn't
exactly help me get a better view of semi-large-scale projects in K, the Krav
Maga tracker is at least a step in the proper direction (non-trivial GUI,
configuraiton, storing and reading data etc.). I'll work through that after
work a bit...

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johkra
I've done some first steps in J and it's really mind blowing. It's hard to get
into it and you have to learn a lot before you can read programs. (Since I had
too little practice, I can't read it.) But the underlying concepts are not too
difficult, even to someone like me with not-so-good math knowledge.

I bought the e-book version of "Fractals, Visualization and J" by Cliff Reiter
to improve my understanding. It's only ~7€ at lulu.com and I bought if to
learn more about the impressive visualizations possible with J.

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naner
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8cckg/arthur_wh...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8cckg/arthur_whitney_on_apl_k_q_and_elegant_code/c08umdl)

It doesn't appear to be all good news over there.

Nevertheless, I have added this to my ever-expanding "things to further
investigate" list.

