From: Guido Sohne Date: 2006-11-24T15:28:40+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby vs Java vs c++ On 11/23/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > Do finance types still use APL? I thought Matlab and Mathematica had > pretty much supplanted APL and its successors. I think you can still buy > a J license, though, and there is a fairly inactive open source APL-ish > package called A+ (aplus in Debian). I would agree with your assertion that APL has been supplanted. Because it may have been too powerful. And too unmaintainable. > A frequently heard argument against APL is that 80% of computer programming is maintenance, and APL programs are unmaintainable: Even from the beginning, no one but the author can understand the code, and, after some time has passed, even (s)he can no longer understand it. > In most computer programming languages, the challenge might be to solve the puzzle in the fewest lines of code. In APL, it is generally a given that the solution will be one line of code: The challenge is to solve the problem in the fewest characters! So if I were asked to bet between an APL adept and a Matlab adept, I would probably pick the APL guy but I would also make sure to never be in a position to have to maintain any of the APL code. > Actually, though, I think APL is the solution to global warming. For one > thing, you can write the climate model in one line of code, which uses > much less electricity than the hundreds of lines of FORTRAN the other > models use. APL will increase global warming by taking us all straight to hell. But yes, when they boast of characters of code, instead of lines of code, when there isn't even an IF statement (which BTW is very common in programming languages). You can calculate all prime numbers with a less than 20 character program. So each character counts quite heavily. My gut instinct tells me that anyone who masters this language should be the one the wise person will bet on if it comes to finance stuff. How very off topic! But we have the New Zealand folks to keep it fair :-) -- G.