Tag Archive for 'apl'

Winter tributes to APL

Published on January 9, 2011 in APL/J/K The Movie. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .by admin

godiva1 225x300 Winter tributes to APLHave you noticed that the last two months of 2010 brought some pleasant surprises for APL?  Perhaps there is a decided shift in the public discourse concerning our underdog hero; or maybe like Alice, I’ve gotten lost in the Rabbit hole.  But it sure seems to me that supporters are coming out of the woodwork in unexpected places. As usual, this provokes a backlash from the unrelenting critics, but their words seem to lack luster, discipline and often sound petty.  An interesting development.

Some highlights of the articles that have passed over my screen in the last few months:

Dick Lipton, a Computer Science professor at Georgia Tech closed out November 2010 by musing on the subject of Notation and thinking. He writes about “notation in mathematics and theory, and how notation can play a role in our thinking.”  Of all things, he comes to the defense of APL’s character set as he puts it in the context of a history of symbolic notations, beginning in 1557 with the introduction of the equal sign, “=”.   Lovely!

In addition, thanks to a tip from my Twitter buddy @kaleidic, I learned that Allan Kay defends APL when Lipton’s colleague at Georgia Tech, Mark Guzdial, chimed in with what boils down to “APL is too hard“.

Incredibly it’s not just the academics who are speaking up.  Back in September, entrepreneur Allan MacKinnon noticed Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere included a tribute to APL in their new book Natural Computing, and he wrote about it in his blog, Pixel I/O.

Let’s see how this all unfolds in 2011!

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APL Array Language family in 2011 – Predictions

Published on January 4, 2011 in APL/J/K The Movie and fun. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .by admin

jump1 300x239 APL Array Language family in 2011 PredictionsHappy New Year Everyone!

After a brief hiatus, we’re jumping back on the air.

As my emergence into the new year coincides with my first big cold of the season, I’m extra grateful and to have spent the last couple of days under the covers with my new book, fellow Canadian Dan Gardner’s Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway. A true gift.

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” (p. 27)

I’ve decided to try on my Hedgehog hat and will make some predictions for the new year.

Temperamentally, I’m more of a Fox, but the research highlighted in the book indicates Hedgehogs get more air time, so I’ll attempt to emulate one.  I hope you can appreciate the irony.

The Predictions

  1. Opportunity for terse, powerful array based languages continues in 2011.
  2. A small number of individuals will achieve unprecedented commercial success.
  3. Major parallel processing problems will be solved and become passé.

It’s nice to be back.  I’m looking forward to another year on this grand film making adventure.

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Array! Hurrah! 2010 in pictures!

Published on December 6, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, fun and self referencing. 1 Comment Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

Thank you, everyone for a wonderful 2010! We’ll be back in January. Happy Holidays!

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Where there’s light…

Published on October 17, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, History and Nuts & Bolts. 1 Comment Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

MySpace 300x244 Where theres light...One of my most beloved programming mentors, who is very shy and might just kill me if I put his name here, once told me a parable about a drunk man looking for his lost key under a streetlight.  The punch line, of course, is that the drunk lost his key in a dark alley, however, he’s looking for it under this particular street light because this is where he can see.

The moral of the story is that we all naturally tend to look where we can see.  Therefore, if you want to find your key, you need to be fearless in dark alleys and you must carry a very strong light saber in your back pocket.  And it certainly helps to travel in packs (or prides).

Next week is a big one for all of us:  Gitte and Morten are in North America, Minnowbrook kicks off another season, and winter is easing into Canada…  This morning I’ve been rewriting history a little, correcting typos and removing the names of potential collaborators announced too soon.  And so, this project moves along.

The ironic thing is that these days, when I feel more lost than ever in this endeavor,  Barry, my Executive Producer, assures me everything is really starting to come together.  Thank goodness, someone has vision.

And what never ceases to amaze me is the growing number of views for The Origins of APL – 1974.  The current count is 4,134!  And the excerpts from Ken Iverson’s memorial in Toronto is at 575 views!

That’s more than enough to keep me going.

For those of you invited to Minnowbrook this week, a toast:  May the force be with you.


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Alan Perlis and APL is More Like French

Published on October 10, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, CS Roots and History. 4 Comments Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

Perlis1 300x199 Alan Perlis and APL is More Like FrenchIt’s interesting trolling the programming language forums where APL is sometimes referred to with unwarranted derision and in the past tense.  I actually start worrying that I am blowing someone’s cover when I say:  Wow,  still the underdog language out there silently kicking ass.

And I have to admit, I find the vehemence is just weird.  Maybe Ken peed on someone’s cornflakes and started some strange feud a long long long time ago, but that’s an almost impossible image on conjure up. I don’t get it.  Anyway…

What I’m winding up to here, is that there have been moments of validation and triumph all along this bumpy path, and Yale University’s Alan Perlis 1978 talk Almost Perfect Artifacts Improve in Small Ways: APL is more French than English represents  one of those moments.

I first learned about Alan Perlis from Dave Thomas, who spoke at a conference in Princeton NJ in 2009.  Thomas mentioned that in this 1978 talk, Alan Perlis talked about idioms in APL, and that these idioms actually were the first design patterns.

It turns out that Perlis also used APL to teach the introductory computer science course,  CPSC 221, at Yale around 1976-1984.

Well, now I have the audio tape of that 1978 talk by Alan Perlis.  Afraid playing it will destroy it, and dying to hear it,  I’m sending it off to the farm where my Dad will carefully digitize it.

I gotta say, it’s awesome holding that tape in my hands.


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Up, down, all around. And York! And Greek!

Published on October 6, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie and Nuts & Bolts. 0 Comments Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

In case you hadn’t noticed, the narrator of this blog isn’t really me; she’s a voice that I made up.  I mean, it’s me and not me both at the same time.  You’re just going to have to trust that there’s shit going on in my life that you don’t want to know or maybe I don’t want you to know, more to the point… anyway… whatever.

Why am I telling you this?  Because as of today, it’s officially not just me.  I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m a fairly error prone creature and I can’t spell to save my life.  So, with a deep sigh of relief, I hired an editor.  Heee Heee

So, that’s Super Cool News Item Number 1.

Super Cool News Item Number 2 is that Eric Iverson is coming over for lunch tomorrow and bringing old VHS tapes!!!  Of what???  I dunno.  Of who????  Well, Ken, of course.  I hope you’re jealous because I feel like the luckiest woman on the planet right about now.

Super Cool News Item Number 3!  It finally sunk into my thick skull that York University! Right! Here! In! Toronto! Actually! Has! APL! History! as a mandate!!!!!!  WHAT?  HA!  So, I’m heading up there on Tuesday.  Hoorah!

JohnHurd2 300x199 Up, down, all around. And York! And Greek!And if that wasn’t enough.  Wouldn’t you know,  it turns out Greek nouns, with their Masculine, Feminine, Neutral, Singular, Plural, Nominative, Genitive, Dative and  Accusative forms are a fine practical example of an array, that can actually be explained to.. well… other humans.

John Hurd, the lovely man I went to meet last week,  is remarkably comfortable with a camera pointed at his face.

Can you guess where all of this is going?  Ta Da!

JohnHurdGreek 300x93 Up, down, all around. And York! And Greek!

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Idiosyntactic

Published on September 24, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, History and IBM. 7 Comments Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

java1 300x199 Idiosyntactic My love affairs with stories and coffee shops are both well known. So you’ll understand why I couldn’t resist but to take Dan McKay’s blog post whole.

Check out his blog when you’re done here, folks. It’s something special.

I love unlikely connections, and the transition from folding paper to matrices on IBM mainframes at least feels like a fairly unlikely one. I was asked to do an origami exhibit at the West Nyack Library over in Rockland (southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson river in New York), which I feel I must first confess did not come together well. Sandy from the library was very nice and supportive about this, but I am alreadt looking to the fall when I may get another chance to pull off the real deal. The actual exhibit aside, as I was making it I had some occasions for weekend folding. That’s not entirely true. I had a crushing weight of occasions for weekend folding and there were times where, with my rafter-stuffed apartment, I realized that I’d either have to spend half my day cleaning to allow me the space for the work, or I could usurp a table at Starbucks. I often did the latter.

On one such visit, after a couple hours’ sitting and folding in relative silence, a woman began to have some trouble with the Starbucks wifi. In giving her a bit of advice, I learned she was Dr. Linda Misek-Falkoff. First of all, she is a Ph.D employed by the Communications Coordination Committee for the U.N.. Second, that she was a researcher at IBM in the 50s. Too cool. Further, her husband just happened to be the Adin Falkoff who worked with Kenneth Iverson to implement the APL matrix-oriented programming language.

I’ve since taken a look at APL, and of course my actionscript matrix class is a little bit like looking at an XML version of a database table in comparison. The language does use non-ascii symbols that make it a little difficult to adopt for the average developer. Yet its influences on some of the most advanced mathematics computing of today, like MATLAB and Mathematica, are significant and recognized. I quite enjoy opportunities to get a personal perspective into the roots of modern computing.

Further, it was just so nice to talk to someone who can speak a little bit of my language. At my work, there are no other developers. My friends aren’t developers. I have no professors with whom I’m close. I’m painfully isolated in that sense, and any conversation with a knowledgeable individual is like a feast to the starved for me.

I guess I just don’t get out enough, but that sequence of events was amazing to me. I could never have expected temporarily cluttered living space and an origami installation to lead to a new subject for a linear algebra project and a maybe even some new friends. Perhaps that says I should take more chances in general, but I’m definitely spending more time in coffee shops.

Dan Mckay
http://blog.idiosyntactic.com/?p=363

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My APL2010 – pick list (guest Vibeke)

Published on September 20, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, Applications and Berlin. 0 Comments Tags: , , .by Vibeke Ulmann

vibekeulmann 150x150 My APL2010 pick list (guest Vibeke)Conference Presentations (based on those I managed to attend):
Most laughs: Prof Dr. Ing Horst Zuse – “The origins of the computer”

Best entertainment value: Jay Foad (Dyalog) – “An Interpreter for Vanilla Siteswap”

Presentation with highest sex-appeal (I want one of those!): John Daintree (Dyalog) – “Taking APL for a RIDE”

Most “wake up we’re moving ahead” presentation: Morten Kromberg, John Scholes and Jonathan Manktelow (Dyalog) – “APL#”

Most fantastic application presentation: Lars Wenzel (Fujitsu Sweden) – “Volvo application”.

Best up-coming APL’ers presentation: Mstislav Elagin & Ryan Tarpine – winners of the programming contest.

Most intriguing and thought provoking on parallel/multicore: Sven-Bodo Scholz (University of Hertfordshire)

Best selling proposition for flogging APL: Paul Grosvenor (Optima Systems) – “Making Money with APL”

Most progressive and “on the ball” APL Vendor with resources to do R&D: Dyalog Ltd.

Berlin is a nice city and I would like to go back sometime and play tourist. Great restaurants and good music venues. Went to A-Trane (Larry Goldings trio) and Quasimodo (Blues rock with German 5 piece bluesband called “five” & bough their CD ‘Five in the Kitchen’. Great food at Ottenthal – best pudding I’ve ever had (poppyseed & lavender sabayon).

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The time space continuum

Published on September 19, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, IBM and IBM 360. 2 Comments Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

light1 199x300 The time space continuum Running in High Park this evening, I was contemplating what more to say about The Design of Design now that I am about 1/3 of the way through.

Rather than calculating that number, I’m visually estimating it, by the way.

Brooks claims that most programmers are visual/spacial thinkers.  Which is part of his larger thesis about modeling a software design process, but that’s not what I want to talk about today.

Right around here in the park, where I shot this photo earlier this summer, it struck me. I love the way Brooks is able to sprinkle anecdotes about working on the architecture for IBM’s System/360 45 years ago with insightful analysis of modern design practices. This guy has seen it all.

And hey! That’s what I have to do. Or some Catherine tempered approximation.

And it’s not just me who thinks this is important.  Wired interviewed him this summer, where, incidentally, he confessed to becoming interested in computers in the 1940′s because he wanted to index his maps.

Now we’re all interested in indexing maps… And guess who I’m getting myself ready to call.

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The Design of Design

Published on September 14, 2010 in APL/J/K The Movie, Bread Crumbs, CS Roots, IBM and IBM 360. 0 Comments Tags: , , .by aprogramminglanguage

Fred Brooks11 300x199 The Design of DesignThis is how Friday went down:

I’m running late, tearing through the house in a where the heck is my bag, sort of way, and then… up pulls the UPS truck.

My books!

Late or not, my Amazon instinct kicks in… luckily the boxes are perfectly designed, they rip open with no struggle at all.  It’s Fred Brook’s new book, of course, The Design of Design. I drop the packaging and immediately flip to the People Index and search for Iverson (p. 72, 124 & 378). Wow.  Twice Brooks juxtaposes Ken Iverson with Google’s Marissa Mayer.  I make a mental note to ask Matt & Susan Gorbet if they know her.

Then I repeat with the subject index and look up APL (p. 72, 124, 141 348). They’re different.  Why?

Well, don’t you know it,  I find an example of not elegant design (pp 141-142) that echos a similar criticism made by Richard Bookstaber in A Demon of Our Own Design. Man oh man are we easy targets! And I’m completely floored – because I believe it is an urban myth.  Not so much that it has never happened, but I don’t believe it has been significant.  But, I guess it makes a good anecdote.  AND sorry folks, I’m not even going to say it because I don’t want to perpetuate its existence in cyberspace.  If you’re burning to know, buy the books!

And just to be extra clear, this is my opinion. And Fred Brooks rocks, so I’m… well… I guess I’m in the dog house again.

Bread Crumbs

In the early 1960′s, Brooks led the IBM System/360 hardware and software project which gave birth to a family of machines with interchangeable software that lead to IBM’s domination of the computer industry for the next 25 years.

Out of Their Minds page 158

Fred Brooks and Ken Iverson were together at Harvard in the 1950′s.   Iverson was hired by IBM in 1960 to develop his special mathematical notation into a programming language for the IBM/360.  And that’s how APL and its family of Array Processing Languages were born.

So…  Guys… I have the best job in the world. It’s terrible form to boast but I just can’t help myself today. After a difficult and trying summer not one, but a few people from the APL Array Language community have stepped up to steady my ship and blow some wind in my sails.  And this feels great.

We rock on!

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