Live data from Hacker News

Stages of denial in encountering K

nsl.com

1–10 of 432 posts

Re: Stages of denial in encountering K

#2
If you are stuck in a boring language and want something more concise, you don’t have to give up legibility by going to K. There are plenty of languages where you are not expected to use “for” loops.

Python/numpy is most accessible and probably closest to “instant gratification”. Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license. And there is always haskell.

Re: Stages of denial in encountering K

#3
post #2

If you are stuck in a boring language and want something more concise, you don’t have to give up legibility by going to K. There are plenty of languages where you are not expected to use “for” loops. Python/numpy is most accessible and probably closest to “instant gratification”. Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license. And there is always haskell.

> Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license.

Do you have an opinion of Octave?

Re: Stages of denial in encountering K

#4
post #2

If you are stuck in a boring language and want something more concise, you don’t have to give up legibility by going to K. There are plenty of languages where you are not expected to use “for” loops. Python/numpy is most accessible and probably closest to “instant gratification”. Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license. And there is always haskell.

> Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license. Do you have an opinion of Octave?

Octave is a Matlab clone, not a Mathematica clone.

Re: Stages of denial in encountering K

#5
post #2

If you are stuck in a boring language and want something more concise, you don’t have to give up legibility by going to K. There are plenty of languages where you are not expected to use “for” loops. Python/numpy is most accessible and probably closest to “instant gratification”. Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license. And there is always haskell.

k is perfectly readable. That's like, one of the biggest points of the post. The post mocks the mindset featured within your comment.

None of the languages you listed are quite as readable as k to someone who knows it.

All of the languages you listed are significantly slower and feature none of the benefits of a concise notation, even with fast.ai's Python style guide made to imitate Arthur Whitney.

http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pd...

Re: Stages of denial in encountering K

#6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mathematica is great for, you know, mathematics, but you’ll need a license. Do you have an opinion of Octave?

Octave is a Matlab clone, not a Mathematica clone.

http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ is closer to Mathematica, and is open source.

Re: Stages of denial in encountering K

#9
the thing that's odd to me is that you could write this exact same post about other languages - a person who learns Haskell ends up writing that exact same range/reduce/plus statement. Modern lisps like Racket or Clojure take you there. Forth programmers and Joy programmers already noticed that their two languages had converged: and they'd write basically exactly this, too. Really, it's only the "mainstream" languages that are different!
Post reply on HN