etbebl parent
I wonder how much overlap there is between users of array languages and of scientific programming languages/dialects like MATLAB, Numpy, and Julia, which are also optimized to operate over arrays. In other words, do K/Klong/whatever proponents realize that there is already a huge community of people who appreciate and utilize powerful operations on arrays to do real work, but just prefer to write something like "max(diff(x))" instead of "|/--:'x"? It's almost the same number of characters and it doesn't require learning a new writing system.
"already": APL dates back to about 1966, and even K from 1993 predates Numpy and Julia. But yes, we do not live in caves and are familiar with these languages. Klong has even been implemented in Numpy, see https://github.com/briangu/klongpy.
I understand that these languages are older; I meant that in the sense that they are nonetheless still trying to recruit new users, but these potential users may already be using something that does something similar.
Oddly enough, the biggest mistake in how I presented BQN early on was thinking only APL insiders would be interested, when in fact the APLers went back to APL and people who hadn't tried other array languages or hadn't gotten far with them were were most successful with BQN. Plenty of people coming to BQN have worked with Numpy or whatever, but I don't think this has the same deterrent effect; they see BQN as different enough to be worth learning. Julia in particular is very different: I don't find that it culturally emphasizes array programming at all.
Julia is fun when used with the “array” mindset. It can also get very terse [0]
More golfing at https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=Julia%... (although most of these rely on syntactic tricks rather than array-language-like terseness).
Array languages like K/Klong are fundamentally different from NumPy/MATLAB in that they're built around rank polymorphism, point-free composition, and tacit programming - not just terse syntax but a different computational model with different performance characteristics and compositional properties.
The world is big enough for people to safely experiment with programming languages. I don’t think there’s any risk to Matlab/Python/Julia (and indeed, many people did and still argue that Julia is excess baggage).
I mean, sure, why not, and I'm not opposed to using array languages as a fun hobby (which seems to be the spirit of this). I just noticed that the selling points in the introduction to the manual were not very compelling to me as a Matlab/Numpy user, and since sometimes people bemoan that array languages aren't more widely used, I just wanted to say, hey we do have powerful "array languages" that imo are strictly better on things that matter for most real work, so it's not surprising.
To be clear, you are referring to the preface to "An Introduction to Array Programming in Klong", right? Having just checked it, I find this to be a very strange angle of attack, because that section is almost exclusively about why the syntax in particular is important. Obviously you disagree (I also think the syntax is overblown, and wish more writing focused on APL's semantic advantages over other array-oriented languages). I think this is a simple difference in taste and there's no need to reach so far for another explanation.