The APL Source Code (2012)

> We have to agree to these kinds of terms about something that is more than half a century old and has zero commercial value. Something in the copyright system is deeply broken.

I don't disagree.

The trouble is that, while almost everything 50 years old has almost no commercial value, a few things that old have tremendous commercial value.

My preferred solution is to have a very short automatic copyright period combined with a fee for registered works that increases exponentially based on the date of registration. Not that it really matters - I'm sure such a solution would never be enacted into law.

T a programming language PLSC

I like APL (and k/j). Problem is, outside trading (and even there it's a niche), it is just not popular enough. This also because most people dismiss it as line noise / write only programming language; that's usually only people who never used it or used it briefly saying that. But it's hard to promote anything that has a reputation like that.

What is a fairly interesting observation (more people have made it, including Arthur Whitney); being able to reason about a program for which you can see all the code on one A4 without having to clickthrough into functions, search, browse through files, classes or even having to scroll is incredibly powerful. All you need is the cheatsheet (provided in your article) (which you know by heart in no time flat) and the program, which, often fits on 1 A4 or less. Modern example of that would be Aaron Hsu his 17 LoC parallel APL compiler[0] (from his thesis).

[0] https://www.bonfire.com/co-dfns-thesis-edition/

"ChatGPT explains Arthur Whitney’s J Incunabulum"[1] was linked in a recent comment[2].

Reading APL code, at least for a novice me, includes puzzling out "ok, now what's going on there?". Being able to highlight a bit of code, and get an explanation, as if sitting with the author, or reading annotated code, might usefully lower the barrier to reading APL?

I've seen several "here is an APLish program, and I'll go through and explain it" posts over the years, though I'm failing to find one now. If that could be somewhat automated...

[1] https://medium.com/@solarbreeze69/chatgpt-explains-arthur-wh... [2] In "J one-page interpreter fragment (1992)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34050715 , the brief comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053932 .

Interesting observation. In general this would allow writing code in formats designed for writing (concise shorthand like APL), and then separately expanded to a format optimized for readers that are less familiar.