APL class projects (was: Please help with SELF installation)

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

I was taking a class once and the teacher proposed a problem where you
had to number the squares in a crossword puzzle. Only squares which were
the start of two or more horizontal or vertical spaces were to be
numbered.

She called me to the blackboard and told be to start drawing an NS chart
(http://www.hit.ac.il/staff/leonidm/information-systems/ch56.html) and I
said we first had to decide what language the program would be written
in. She claimed that the language you use has no effect on how you think
about the problem, and in this case there would always be three nested
loops. That is not something you should ever say to me :-) I told her
that if I used APL there would be no loops. So she said the language
would be Pascal and I finished the program for her.

The following class I have her the APL version as a present. I could
have written it in one line, but did it in four instead to make it more
readable :-)

-- Jecel

David Harris wrote on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:37:37 -0800
>
> I did LU decomposition and backward substitution in two lines of APL.
> Oh, and TicTacToe in two lines as well, as I recall.  Of course they weren't
> terribly understandable :-)  That was back when we had a IBM370/145
> with APL microcode, and Selectric terminals --- ah, the good ol' days.  
> David
> 
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Michael Latta wrote:
> 
> I did a full z80 simulator and console in APL in 11 pages of loosely
> formatted code. For some tasks it is very effective. 
> 
> Michael
> On Feb 16, 2011, at 5:00 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote:
> 
> I think I saw a talk on YouTube where someone aced a project that
> way. Used APL too if I remember right. Think they guy's name was
> David something or other?
> 
> On Feb 9, 2011, at 3:35 PM, ungar wrote:
> 
>  
> 
> Can't help you too much, but if you want to be clever, write it in a
> dynamic language like APL or Smalltalk! (Or Lisp...)
> - David