Re: [stack] Advantages of cat, joy ..?

k and j is one of the few languages that really *forces* you to think
differently. i know, i'm still trying to wrap my head around it :)

that said, k's successor - q - is much more accessible. however,
(re-)reading q code can be as daunting as (re-)reading k code, especially if
the code is written by coding gurus like stevan :)

k and j are termed to be 'array' languages. but the way i see it is that an
array is a special, but very concrete case of a function. an array is a
function that maps (a consecutive domain of) integers to anything (untyped).

the function is *the*unifying concept that works in many wondrous ways in k.
and  i believe *that* is the real power of k.

i feel stevan is right about factor. sure, factor does force you to think
differently: the stack *does* that to you. but what really new concepts does
factor bring to the table? for example, for factor to be efficiently
compiled to a register based architecture, it must leave the stack model. it
also feeds my suspicion that - if a language primitive can be compiled to
x84 one-to-one - that language primitive is not far away from - say - a
pascal primitive.

but how does k stack up against pascal? i believe k is a magnitude different
from pascal, because it puts collections *before* the scalars. and while k
is interpreted, it beats heavily optimized (and compiled) pascal programs in
many cases.

so my guess is that collection based languages are the future. and i do hope
that such collection oriented language is (optionally) strongly typed, and
hopefully, written in postfix syntax :)

that's it: postfix syntax is the most economic way to *syntactically*
express computations. now match postfix with q and you might have to most
economical language ever...

in the end, the primitives make the difference ....

are they scalar or ....?

- robbert
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Stevan Apter <[email protected]> wrote:

>   syntax is as important to me as it is to the next guy, but other
> characteristics of PLs matter more, chief among them being how
> many new concepts i'm required to master before i can use the
> language well.
>
> when i'm programming, all my thinking takes place within a very
> simple framework: find a data representation for my problem, then
> find the best set of functions which transform these representations
> to solve my problem. r <- f[a;...;z]. iterate until done.
>
> as a k guy, two things about joy stood out immediately: (i) joy
> is a scalar language, and (ii) the syntax is concatenative and
> not applicative. but it turned out to be a simple matter to
> enhance joy (actually, the false language) with the k primitives
> (www.nsl.com/k//f/f.htm). ok, i had to think about "the stack",
> but that was a small price to pay for the reduction in syntactic
> complexity.
>
> factor is way too complicated for me. i gave up early on. i
> really don't want to think about the internals of the implementation
> when i'm coding. the ONLY thing i want floating around in my head
> in addition to the problem i'm working on is at most 20 or 30 purely
> functional primitives, and ideally these should be divided into a
> few classes of a few members each. (granted, i haven't kept up
> with factor development, so things might have gotten simpler, but
> that's not the direction things seemed to be taking a few years
> ago.)
>
> typing is another language feature i don't want to think about.
> i was discouraged from learning haskell because half the messages
> posted in their newsgroup involved some typing conundrum. the last
> thing i need is to get stopped in my tracks by one of these. don't
> get me wrong. the problems john and christopher are working on
> interest me, but there's no way i would ever use a language in
> my day job which required this extra level of attention. i guess
> the easiest way to put it is that i don't want my programs to
> fail in more than five or six ways.
>
> oddly enough, the only language proposed in this forum i can
> imagine using is enchilada, and that's mainly for two reasons:
> (i) i've seen robbert use the language to solve hard problems
> very easily, and (ii) whenever i tried to learn it, my brain
> exploded. those facts indicate to me that there are some
> powerful new ideas (but very simple ones) going on in that
> language. (i had the same experience reading john conway's
> book on surreal numbers many years ago.)
>
> now billy, who's a very creative thinker, has reported similar
> problems with j and k, so this might be (it probably is) entirely
> a matter of thinking-style, or maybe a function of what languages
> you learned first and used most.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Nowak" <[email protected] <john%40johnnowak.com>>
> To: <[email protected] <concatenative%40yahoogroups.com>>
> Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 4:49 AM
> Subject: Re: [stack] Advantages of cat, joy ..?
>
> >
> > On Feb 20, 2009, at 1:00 PM, Joe Bowbeer wrote:
> >
> >> As the old saying goes: in matters of taste, there's no argument.
> >
> > True, but I don't think syntax is a "matter of taste" the same way raw
> > eel is. Different syntaxes have different qualities. For example,
> > Scheme has a syntax that is well-suited to meta-programming and
> > structural editing. Joy's syntax makes algebraic manipulation very
> > easy. Such qualities aren't subjective or matters of taste.
> >
> > Of course, some elements of syntax are subjective. My concern though
> > is that it's too easy to throw out objectively useful things because
> > someone said "ewww" upon first seeing them.
> >
> > - John
> >
>
>  
>


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