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Ask HN: Which language with an APL-style interface is *best*?
2 points by _-richard 2963 days ago
Re: APL-style languages- The best options seem to be: (in order of preference, from most popular first to least popular last)

-J

-Kona

-Klong

All three are open source, which is a requirement.

J seems to be the best choice, but it does bother me that it's described as a synthesis of APL "and the FP and FL function-level languages".[0]

Kona, a clone of the closed-source language K, is described as the synthesis of APL and Lisp[1], of which two languages Prof. Perlis refers to, while praising APL in "In Praise of APL"[1], suggesting that APL is on an axis, which Lisp is also on, opposite APL, and that the two languages complement each other.

I'm asking as a student, not considering code portability or comprehensibility.

I'm OK with a write-only language.

I want something that will integrate snugly with a unix system, and something that is performant and scales well (I've heard that the K interpreter fits in the CPU cache).

A language whose interpreter/compiler deals with threading.

Thanks, Richard

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language)

[1]http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/perlis77.htm

[2]https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona [1,337 commits...]