| It's at least reassuring to learn from the 1952-1954 section that the phenomenon of doing things without having any clue about them easily predates the microprocessor. (btw I second the recommendation of the 1962 A Programming Language) Edit: > The third page had an illustration that, in a few short lines, described George Dantzig's simplex algorithm simply and precisely. > That was the overwhelming, crucial experience. This is the crucial feature of the APL family for me: they permit algorithm discussions via inline, not block, content. eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28970345 Edit 2:
Upon reflection, it's probably also the Achilles' Heel of the APL family: most people vastly prefer easy and DWIMy over simple and precise. Edit 3:
found the paper containing the simplex algorithm: https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/DFSP.htm
Note that 1960 was before "structured programming" so we now have (with the benefit of hindsight) much better ways to express the control flow of this calculation. |
Most people also vastly prefer not having to work on difficult problems. Iverson was clearly trying to provide a notation that would help the (admittedly smaller) group of people who find solving difficult problems interesting and valuable.