[self-interest] APL class projects (was: Please help with SELF installation)

[Michael Latta]

I agree. The language you use has a huge impact on how you approach a problem. In college we had a course that exposed us to 10 languages for that very point. The programmers that have only used one language are crippled in many ways. 


Michael

On Feb 17, 2011, at 7:03 AM, "Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <jecel at merlintec.com> wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> 
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