[gandercrews]

I tend to agree with your broader points. In my personal life I often reach for APL to do ad-hoc data analysis. It has grown on me in the last year and has fundamentally changed how I perceive and write code. However, I don't think I could introduce it to a company.

For specific points, I would love to see an APL dialect that adopts parts of J, K & haskell. Something that retains the symbolic notation, that provides a deeper & more fluid interface to asm/C, adds some ALGOL-like control-flow constructs, and takes advantage of the intervening decades of programming theory.

APL to me is an alternate history of what programming could have been. Its not perfect by any means, but it boldly challenges assumptions about what it means to communicate mathematical thought. It was ahead of its time, and its unfortunate its taken this long for languages to superficially adopt its insights.

PS: gnu apl is a great FOSS implementation that is enjoyable to use and rich in features.