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Someone in the HN comments called out that J is the proof that Iverson's "Notation as a Tool of Thought" is a failed idea. Even Iverson himself, the inventor of "Iverson Notation" (proto-APL) as a better math notation, the inventor of APL, who used it to design the IBM 360's processor and then turned it into a programming language, abandoned it for ugly ASCII scribble (J) because that was more convenient. I guess the ideas, not the notation, turned out to be the important part after all. "I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." - It's Advent of Code[1] (AoC) season again; take a moment to look at the answers people put in the big Reddit answers threads e.g.[2]. The comments are all a beautiful/awful zoo of languages - wildly varying in programmer experience level, familiarity with the language, choice of approach and algorithm, runtime, focus on a tidy solution or a quick answer. I wish we could see how much time people put into their solutions - I suspect this famous quote applies and it takes longer whether you polish a plain language or write directly in a terse language. I think the hurried or inexperienced answers tend to be long and garbled, the experienced and polished answers tend to be clean and clear. The racing leaderboard entries that I've seen - people seeing the problem and getting an answer ASAP - tend to be Python, and tend to be short and clear. They're almost never (APL, J, K, Q, R, uiua, Haskell). Does that say anything of value about the ability to quickly and clearly express ideas in a language? I feel like there's enough of these answers now after years of AoC for someone to analyse and compare the languages. My gut feeling is that non-golfed Python still comes out the most easily writable and easily readable, the nicest balance between density and verbosity. [1] https://adventofcode.com/ - daily puzzles through December, solved with code using whatever language you like, however you like, the site only checks your answer not your working. [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1883ibu/2023_... |