It is fantastic to see Jeremy from fast.ai tying modern tensor libraries to its origins in APL.
If you are interested in this deep interconnection and what future might hold, please check out New Kind of Paper series. [0]
APL and Array Programming
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: APL and Array Programming
#22I did a bit of the last AoC in BQN. I really liked the language but got stuck a bit when it came to the more tricky loops where you had to do some reassignment if I remember correctly... I should go back and finish the rest of it. Saw there were a few others that had solutions I could take inspiration and learn from.
Re: APL and Array Programming
#23APL seems like a great language for computer graphics! Has anyone tried their hands at the same?
I'm using APL to build graphics for a hardware startup. You can see an example of the device, called Bloxl, and its graphics in this video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AUEIgfj9koc
Related HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24434717
More pics and videos at: https://bloxl.co
My April APL compiler has a terminal graphics application as one of its demos, which you can see in this folder: https://github.com/phantomics/april/tree/master/demos/ncurse...
Re: APL and Array Programming
#24I recently did a project using Dyalog APL. I really wanted to love it. On the pro side, the community was great and I loved the language, but only to a point. There are way too many instances of utter astonishment at behaviors that seemed to be just how the language works. I had a lot of trouble finding good, mature libraries for things I’ve taken for granted in other languages. I’ve found that Julia provides 98% of…
As an array language developer I may be a bit heretical in the community for my view that array languages are a domain-specific tool, not a general-purpose tool. They are the best by far in their niche of working with arrays, but they can be harder to fit to some other kinds of tasks, especially when it comes to more semantic programming.
That's why my APL compiler, April (https://github.com/phantomics/april), can be called within Common Lisp with CL data structures as its input and output. It's also trivial to port functions from CL and its libraries into an April workspace. You can see an example on page 2 of this paper: https://zenodo.org/record/6381963
In this way April puts the entire CL ecosystem at your fingertips. If you want to do something like making HTTP requests or ingesting XML files, you can write a function to do it and express the specific parameters for your use case in CL, and then have the function available within April using a simple monadic/dyadic argument API. This can sidestep the need to port every necessary library into APL itself.
Re: APL and Array Programming
#25Russ Cox did a bunch of the days of Advent of Code 2021 in Ivy, an APL-like language by Rob Pike. Really interesting stuff. https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=ek1yjc9sSag
Re: APL and Array Programming
#26It is fantastic to see Jeremy from fast.ai tying modern tensor libraries to its origins in APL. If you are interested in this deep interconnection and what future might hold, please check out New Kind of Paper series. [0] [0]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Nice capture of thoughts.
FWIW, s/effect/affect/ .
Re: APL and Array Programming
#27I recently did a project using Dyalog APL. I really wanted to love it. On the pro side, the community was great and I loved the language, but only to a point. There are way too many instances of utter astonishment at behaviors that seemed to be just how the language works. I had a lot of trouble finding good, mature libraries for things I’ve taken for granted in other languages. I’ve found that Julia provides 98% of…
As an array language developer I may be a bit heretical in the community for my view that array languages are a domain-specific tool, not a general-purpose tool. They are the best by far in their niche of working with arrays, but they can be harder to fit to some other kinds of tasks, especially when it comes to more semantic programming. That's why my APL compiler, April ( https://github.com/phantomics/april ), can…
> my APL compiler, April
Oh, I have to try this! APL is in the family tradition, I literally learned it from my mom. Probably the first programming language I sincerely enjoyed! I sure do miss the glyphs. Mom uses R now and often notes some things used to be easier with APL…
Re: APL and Array Programming
#28Well this is unexpected - didn't think my little study group would appear on HN! :O Well anyhoo, all are welcome to join; details in the linked thread (including playlist of last week's videos so you can catch up). As it happens, my interview on The Array Cast was just published today: https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode31-jeremy-howard In it I discuss my thoughts on array programming, including in PyTorch, nu…
I also have found that kids pick up APL very easily. Schools are probably missing a huge opportunity not using it to teach math and computer science.
I also think schools are missing out massively, but not only by not teaching them at every chance, but because they do not combine these things. If I had been taught math and computer programming combined, implementing things one learns, damn, I would have been waaay more interested in math in later school years and that would probably have lead to me being much better at math later on at university too. It just gives you something practical to do and a feeling of success, when you make the computer do it for you, while at the same time you learn about computer programming.
I hope some day we see those 2 things married into one superb class at schools.
Re: APL and Array Programming
#29It is fantastic to see Jeremy from fast.ai tying modern tensor libraries to its origins in APL. If you are interested in this deep interconnection and what future might hold, please check out New Kind of Paper series. [0] [0]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Nice capture of thoughts. FWIW, s/effect/affect/ .
Thank you, fixed. :)