[throwaway7645]

Certain things translate, but not everything. In J when almost everything is an array and you're using points free form, you can pretty much combine everything without having to build classes...etc. Those python examples are much longer even for simple stuff. As far as books go, Dyalog APL has "Mastering Dyalog APL" for free and although Dyalog costs money, a hobby license is free. There is a guy who writes programming languages and books for a living. He recently wrote an array language called "Klong" and a book on it. J has several books. There's not a whole lot on the philosophy, but using it teaches you what you need. It looks like line noise at first, but you start to recognize idioms and phrases. Aaron Hsu did two HackerNews discussions on here and a YouTube broadcast on his "co-dfns" GPU compiler for Dyalog APL. That was pretty amazing. He talks about trying to write it in Scheme, Java,etc...but APL lets him put it all on a few pages to where he sees everything at once. At his level, abstractions aren't necessary.

[matthewwiese]

I did a cursory Google search for Klong after your mention. The author of the language (and its book) posts his writings to t3x.org

Thank you for the brief mention -- I've been perusing his website and writings and am enamored. There's something about niche, obscure tools (and their authors) that give me some profound joy.

[throwaway7645]

I was thoroughly impressed as well. It would take me years to read all his stuff. Klong us actually written in his other language. That is impressive.