Re: APL, J, and Axiom documentation

root wrote:
> J/APL has advantage of forcing you to think about the solution to
> a problem in a completely orthogonal way to the usual programming
> paradigms. In my experience the "re-expression" of an idea in a
> second, very different form dramatically highlights the design
> decisions made in the first form. Since the original authors are
> no longer available we need to tease out the design decisions.
> 
> Unfortunately I'm unaware of any category or strongly typed work in J
> so I don't think the idea carries much weight beyond the numerics. I
> added a piecewise Gamma function to Axiom in February and have been
> looking at the special functions since then. J seems to be a good fit
> in this area, hence the original remark.

Well ... at one time I claimed there were only three "original" 
programming languages -- Lisp, APL and Forth. So if we call Axiom a 
"dialect of Lisp", recoding pieces of it in an APL dialect would give us 
two thirds of the spectrum. Perhaps someone would pick up the third??

But I really think the YAGNI principle needs to be observed here. You 
Ain't Gonna Need It! :)