I only recently came across an interview with Arthur Whitney about the language k and only then the array-based languages really started to draw me in. I now wish I knew more about them and am still looking for a nice intro to APL and the likes.
That said the best way to learn APL is to write it. Dyalog has a conquest that start with 10 short exercises. There is also APL quest, which you can solve en your own and then compare with Adam’s solution
Words are expressed in the standard ASCII alphabet. Primitive words are
spelled with one or two letters; two letter words end with a period or a
colon. The entire spelling scheme is shown on the back cover.
Too bad the covers aren’t included in the scan! It may be more convenient to use https://www.jsoftware.com/ioj/ioj.htm
which includes a summary of those spellings:
it’s the same Appendix F as the scan, although it omits references to the C sources.
I only recently came across an interview with Arthur Whitney about the language k and only then the array-based languages really started to draw me in. I now wish I knew more about them and am still looking for a nice intro to APL and the likes.
The learner-friendliest I’ve found is Uiua but it’s a little different than the classic APLs.
Wow that website is actually really neat! Thank you for pointing it out, I just lost a couple of hours digging into that.
This is a nice intro to APL imho. It is short (Mastering Dyalog APL is very good, but it is massive) and introduces a few operators at a time
https://xpqz.github.io/learnapl/intro.html
That said the best way to learn APL is to write it. Dyalog has a conquest that start with 10 short exercises. There is also APL quest, which you can solve en your own and then compare with Adam’s solution
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYKQVqyrAEj9wDIUyLDGtDAFTKY38BUMN
I think that kbook is a pretty good intro to k. There are also other resources on the k wiki.
https://xpqz.github.io/learnapl/intro.html and https://tryapl.org/ are both lovely!
However, Intro to College Math in APL is very interesting too!
I have an actual paper copy of this on my shelf. It’s neat.
(I also have a paper copy of the J dictionary and a J product catalog from around 1992.)
Too bad the covers aren’t included in the scan! It may be more convenient to use https://www.jsoftware.com/ioj/ioj.htm which includes a summary of those spellings: it’s the same Appendix F as the scan, although it omits references to the C sources.