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The hardest part of J is revisiting old code and trying to figure out what you were thinking when you wrote it. The cognitive cost of writing the same program
by patricklynch 11y ago
The hardest part of J is revisiting old code and trying to figure out what you were thinking when you wrote it.
The cognitive cost of writing the same program in J versus your current favorite functional language (let's assume Scheme) is basically the same. The J version will be much more concise, and probably quicker to write.
But I found it much harder to review and extend my own J code. Where the Scheme program I wrote last month will be mostly self-documenting and easy to modify, the equivalent J program may as well be machine code.
I feel like I _should_ appreciate J more, because it is powerful, but it may be too concise for me to be comfortable with.
-survived the same class (Hi Ryan!)
- saryant 11y agoWe run into each other every time there's a submission about J.
- patricklynch 11y agoJust about. Same time in a year and a half?
- saryant 11y agoI've marked my calendar.
- llasram 11y agoOut of curiosity, and if it isn’t impolite to ask, where/when did this bizarre class occur?
- saryant 11y agoTrinity University in San Antonio. The founder of the CS department was a big fan of J and had been there since the 60's so no one really wanted to tell him to stop. J was only used in the Intro FP course. He retired the same year I graduated (2012) and AFAIK the course is now taught in a combination of Scheme, Haskell and ML. The intro sequence for majors also includes Scala so students there get a pretty good basis in FP.
- patricklynch 11y agoThe most recent version of the course - http://www.cs.trinity.edu/About/The_Courses/cs2322/ http://www.cs.trinity.edu/About/The_Courses/cs2322/ They'll probably rewrite the CS department site eventually, but until then, it's a repository of all the information about J you can handle.
- saryant 11y agoIronically, the reason the CS site hasn't been updated is because it's implemented in J. So naturally no one is willing to touch it.