Re: Lack of software abstractions

I do not have as much difficulty seeing the challenges since I taught  
APL to myself and to many others that you might consider "Dummies"

I am having some difficulties with J

Here are some examples:

1.  The notation J layers many things in unique ways and they are not  
completely documented.  People with wide mathematical experience
will find it easier to discover how particular elements of J behave  
than naive users.  However explicit documentation could resolve this.


2.  Reading requires recognition and many people give up when they  
can't recognize things.  People can learn to read many kinds of encoding
and can decode in many ways.  For example a person may know that R E  
A D encodes particular sounds and they might phonetically be able to
pronounce the word read in English but unless they understand that  
read means comprehending the meaning of written symbols, that would
not help them to understand the word.  On the other hand a speaker of  
French might recognize the word READ to be a symbol that can translate
to the French word LIRE and from this might understand that READ  
means "Pénétrer dans la connoissance de quelque chose d'obscur & de  
caché"
There may be different nuances of READ and LIRE that do not map one  
to one.

Reading the J word +. and consulting the documentation to find +.y  
yields a two-element list of the real and imaginary parts of its  
argument. For example, +.3j5 is 3 5, and +.3 is 3 0 .
 might not be sufficient for some people to understand the nuances  
of +. in J.

3.  Mapping a symbol that you think you recognize to the wrong  
concept can cause misunderstanding and confusion.

4.  APL was simple in the following ways and J inherited some and not  
other of these

(a) APL primitives were easy to distinguish from defined verbs, nouns  
and variables.  J uses ASCII symbols that blend into text.
(b) APL has one consistent syntax and order of operation (with some  
anomalies introduced in various implementations to the detriment of  
APL). J uses more complex syntax and grammatical forms.
(c)  Primitives of APL did allow a level of abstraction that did  
simplify underlying complexity.  J permits you to compress complex  
ideas but it is not necessarily by simplifying an underlying complexity.

5.  As with any language, simplicity and elegance are produced by the  
author and no matter, the reader needs experience and literacy to  
appreciate such elements.

6.  Language acquisition is different at different stages of human  
development - there is a difference in your brain between how you  
interpret your "mother tongue" or how you learn multiple languages as  
a child or in latter years say through ESL (English as a Second  
Language) classes.  There are families of languages - Romance  
languages like French, Spanish, Italian are similar and more readily  
mutually understood.  J and APL are as different from COBOL or BASIC  
as Basque is to the French, Spanish, Italian neighboring languages.

7.  Very often language differences are used to define a community,  
to be understood by members and to exclude members.  For those  
interested you might find insight in the following:

How I got into linguistics, and what I got out of it - by William  
Labov, University of Pennsylvania
> As I finally figured out, the Martha's Vineyard sound change was  
> serving as a symbolic claim to local rights and privileges, and the  
> more someone tried to exercise that claim, the stronger was the  
> change. This became my M.A. essay, and I gave it as a paper before  
> the Linguistic Society of America.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/HowIgot.html

OR

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

OR

COMMUNITIES OF DIFFERENCE
Culture, Language, Technology
Edited by Peter Pericles Trifonas
Availability: Now In Stock
First Edition
From Palgrave Macmillan
Pub date: May 2005
256 pages
Size 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
$85.00 - Hardcover (1-4039-6326-6)
Also available:
$29.95 - Paperback (1-4039-6327-4)

8.  Think of natural language.  You might know the sound components  
(phonemes) of a language but have a limited vocabulary.   You might  
learn an extensive vocabulary but misunderstand grammatical  
construction.  You might have no understanding of prosodic features  
of rhythm, pitch, tempo, loudness that convey meaning in speech or be  
unable to create written text that evokes these elements.  Your  
specific background and experience may not provide insight into  
language used by another gender, region, class, occupation or other  
factor bering on language use.  You may not understand how certain  
rules are bent or broken to produce special effects like poetry or  
jokes.

Here is an exercise for those interested:  Try to understand reading  
better by viewing this site.  It is a guide to writing Mandarin  
Chinese in romanization.

http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/chinese_adjectives.html





dly
dydre-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On 25-Jan-07, at 1:27 PM, Björn Helgason wrote:

> I guess I am beyond seeing what challenges a Dummy might face  
> trying to learn J.
> I guess most of us are.