Re: APL Christmas 2020 doodle: Tree

[Otto Diesenbacher-Reinmüller]

Hi Russ,

Russtopia <rmagee@gmail.com> writes:

> The more I explore, the more I question whether I must choose to study "the
> APL2 path" or "the Dyalog APL path" ... :) I hope I do not have to choose!
> So far, trying both dialects while learning has illuminated some concepts
> for me, but I fear I might confuse myself with implementation differences.

I asked myself the same question, some months ago, as I started my
adventures into APL.

At first I started with the APL2 way (in gnu-apl), especially, as the
literature I read, is APL2 specific. I can highly recommend "APL2 at a
glance", "APL2 in depth". Also for further brain food "Datenstrukturen
in APL2 - Mit Anwendungen aus der künstlichen Intelligenz" (AFAIK
unfortunately only in German, sometimes IMHO misuses APL in an
imperative way, but nevertheless interesting).

Also there are a bunch of interesting papers from the 90s
and 00s, f.e. about OOP programming, cellular automates, etc in APL2.

In the meanwhile, especially in getting more and more literate in APL
(still a newbie), I am cheating on gnu-apl, and use Dyalog for its
networking (Conga), namespaces, OO, or better performance. F.e. this
years advent-of-code I made in Dyalog. Sorry gnu-apl! :).

btw - as I primarily have a Common Lisp background, highly recommended:
also have a look at April (which initially brought me to APL).

just my 2cents, from a beginner - Otto