[patricklynch]

The hardest part of J is revisiting old code and trying to figure out what you were thinking when you wrote it.

The cognitive cost of writing the same program in J versus your current favorite functional language (let's assume Scheme) is basically the same. The J version will be much more concise, and probably quicker to write.

But I found it much harder to review and extend my own J code. Where the Scheme program I wrote last month will be mostly self-documenting and easy to modify, the equivalent J program may as well be machine code.

I feel like I _should_ appreciate J more, because it is powerful, but it may be too concise for me to be comfortable with.

-survived the same class (Hi Ryan!)

[saryant]

We run into each other every time there's a submission about J.

[patricklynch]

Just about. Same time in a year and a half?

[saryant]

I've marked my calendar.

[llasram]

Out of curiosity, and if it isn’t impolite to ask, where/when did this bizarre class occur?

[saryant]

Trinity University in San Antonio. The founder of the CS department was a big fan of J and had been there since the 60's so no one really wanted to tell him to stop. J was only used in the Intro FP course. He retired the same year I graduated (2012) and AFAIK the course is now taught in a combination of Scheme, Haskell and ML.

The intro sequence for majors also includes Scala so students there get a pretty good basis in FP.

[patricklynch]

The most recent version of the course - http://www.cs.trinity.edu/About/The_Courses/cs2322/

They'll probably rewrite the CS department site eventually, but until then, it's a repository of all the information about J you can handle.

[saryant]

Ironically, the reason the CS site hasn't been updated is because it's implemented in J.

So naturally no one is willing to touch it.