From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2008-01-06T15:49:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet

Paul Stickney wrote:
>> APL, for example, probably would never have taken off if Kenneth
>> Iverson had invented it in a university instead of at IBM.
> 
> APL took off like the Spuce Goose.
> [http://www.sprucegoose.org/aircraft_artifacts/exhibits.html]
> 
> 

There was a time in the late 1960s -- mid 1970s when you couldn't walk
into an econometrics shop without knowing APL. I don't think it ever
found any other practical niches, but it was very big there. The current
open dialect, Aplus-fsf, was in fact cut loose from Morgan Stanley.

I would have *loved* to learn APL in its heyday. I was actually at IBM
(Poughkeepsie, NY) when it was developed, and met Ken Iverson. He and
Aden Falkoff were promoting the language within the IBM laboratories.
But the team I was on had severe performance constraints and we wrote
everything in assembler.

After I left IBM, there was never an opportunity for me to learn and use
it, and by the time personal computers showed up that could run APL, I
had discovered Forth. :)