[batista]

>The idea appears to be that array languages have builtin functions for operations that would require map/reduce/etc in the applicative programming paradigm. I agree that is convenient, but the downside is that only array operations that are supported this way are the ones that are anticipated by the language designer. If you want to split up an array in some way other than intended, you're back to applicative programming

I can't see why this should hold for all array languages in general.

If the language has some mechanism to let you add new operation that are on the same "class / level" as the built-ins, then the above does not hold.