[Cialug] Random nerd fact

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On 2018-07-27 15:10, Don Ellis wrote:
> If you want real terseness, try APL (A Programming Language). All words
> we're used to seeing were expressed as Greek symbols, which were shifts of
> the normal lower case keyboard. We used Selectric typewriters with either
> specially printed keyboards or a little reference card attached above the
> keyboard (typeballs were replaced with APL typeballs). In terms of
> programming latency, while a COBOL program can be read years later with
> perfect understanding, and APL programmer could have trouble reading his
> own work within minutes (or seconds) of having written it.

I took a little 1-credit class in APL. Neat language from a mathematical
perspective. But... it is the only truly write-only language that i've
ever used. Students quickly learned that debugging isn't worth the
effort. It was easier just to rewrite the whole section of code from
scratch rather than trying to read and understand the old code.

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Daniel Ramaley | Server Engineer 2
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