APL Jobs: Are we all hobbyists? : APL

"Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers. It makes
products difficult to plan, build and test."

This quote comes from one of M$ executives

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/43b170c4-50...0779e2340.html

It is interesting to see things seem to go in cycles

M$ became big by being small, simple and cheap

Now it is failing because of its own success

It will be interesting to see what happens when developers discover the
simplicity of APL
Or is it not that simple?
Is there an opportunity for APL in the market now?
What about APL webapplications?
Are they easy simple and cheap or complex?

> It will be interesting to see what happens when developers discover the simplicity of APL
> Or is it not that simple?
> Is there an opportunity for APL in the market now?

As IT organizations grow, so does the size of the burocracy.
It's usually the burocracy that becomes complex rather than the
application.

I repeat : " I'd rather pay 2 profis good money than hire 10 idiots".

I think this is one of APL's main strengths - it destroys the needless
burocracy.
...and is at the same time APL's big disadvantage in that the insecurity
of IT managers is what makes them try to make themselves "independant"
of the "specialist" by hiring a 10 fold burocracy - an existing APL
discussion thread handles this one !

In the very early 70's, a friend of mine who was the #1 brain behind
IBM's mainframe OS ( OS 2.2 ) used APL extensively to organize his
assembler code. A sort of super-intelligent Macro-Assembly tool !

Although I initially though your post was like comparing apples to
oranges, maybe there really is a sensible way of using APL to "organize
and simplify" Microsoft's C-code morrass !

aleph0 wrote:

> Although I initially though your post was like comparing apples to
> oranges, maybe there really is a sensible way of using APL to "organize
> and simplify" Microsoft's C-code morrass !


In J there are really good examples of how to use Object Oriented
Programming

The Locales are used extensively

As with other APLs J does not need very many lines to do complex things

The back side is that you only need to get a few lines wrong to get
very complex garbage

By organizing projects into well organized small scripts, verbs and
structure that uses Locales in OOP manner it is possible to build quite
big systems that are easy to maintain

What is mostly important is that new technologies are constantly making
their way and they are usually much simpler, leaner and meaner than
what was there before

I think that the web is an opportunity for APL
People writing web applications can keep the code at their site and
allow the users calling well defined interfaces

The users need not see the APL code

One of the biggest objections to APL earlier was it was so complex to
install and maintain
If the users need not do it because they use interfaces they are
already familiar with those objections need not arise

Björn Helgason wrote:

> "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers. It makes
> products difficult to plan, build and test."
>
> This quote comes from one of M$ executives
>
> http://news.ft.com/cms/s/43b170c4-50...0779e2340.html
>
> It is interesting to see things seem to go in cycles
>
> M$ became big by being small, simple and cheap
>
> Now it is failing because of its own success

Microsoft is "failing"? I should be such a failure.

> It will be interesting to see what happens when developers discover the
> simplicity of APL
> Or is it not that simple?

It is not that simple. APL is simple to _use_ because there is a good deal
of underlying complexity. It is very much like Windows in that regard.

> Is there an opportunity for APL in the market now?

For APL programmers, I suspect it's limited--you need to find the APL
community in your area, if you can, and network. On the other hand, being
specialized, once you're _in_ (i.e. established in the community) you'll
probably do well.

> What about APL webapplications?
> Are they easy simple and cheap or complex?

The real question is whether there are tools available for APL that make
creating web apps simple and are those tools superior to the tools for
other languages such as Java, also are there decent interfaces between the
APL web app and back end programs such as database managers?

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

aleph0 wrote:

>> It will be interesting to see what happens when developers discover the
>> simplicity of APL Or is it not that simple?
>> Is there an opportunity for APL in the market now?
>
> As IT organizations grow, so does the size of the burocracy.
> It's usually the burocracy that becomes complex rather than the
> application.
>
> I repeat : " I'd rather pay 2 profis good money than hire 10 idiots".
>
> I think this is one of APL's main strengths - it destroys the needless
> burocracy.

You keep asserting this. Now where and when in the real world has that
actually happened?

> ..and is at the same time APL's big disadvantage in that the insecurity
> of IT managers is what makes them try to make themselves "independant"
> of the "specialist" by hiring a 10 fold burocracy - an existing APL
> discussion thread handles this one !
>
> In the very early 70's, a friend of mine who was the #1 brain behind
> IBM's mainframe OS ( OS 2.2 ) used APL extensively to organize his
> assembler code. A sort of super-intelligent Macro-Assembly tool !
>
> Although I initially though your post was like comparing apples to
> oranges, maybe there really is a sensible way of using APL to "organize
> and simplify" Microsoft's C-code morrass !

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

>You keep asserting this. Now where and when in the real world has that actually happened?

Have you ever seen an APL programming department with 300+ programmers?

In fact, have you ever seen an APL programming department with more
than 3 programmers?
;-)

aleph0 wrote:

>>You keep asserting this. Now where and when in the real world has that
>>actually happened?
>
> Have you ever seen an APL programming department with 300+ programmers?
>
> In fact, have you ever seen an APL programming department with more
> than 3 programmers?

Not an answer. Do you have a case history in which a large IT department
was replaced by a smaller group as the result of adopting APL?

> ;-)

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

> Not an answer. Do you have a case history in which a large IT department
> was replaced by a smaller group as the result of adopting APL?

I think you've missed my point; I was saying that despite the strength
of APL being able to reduce burocracy in IT, it simply does NOT happen
!

"" ..and is at the same time APL's big disadvantage in that the
insecurity
of IT managers is what makes them try to make themselves "independant"
of the "specialist" by hiring a 10 fold burocracy - an existing APL
discussion thread handles this one ! ""

i.e. it does NOT happen, BECAUSE OF the above !!

Do you "now" get my point ?

aleph0 wrote:

>> Not an answer. Do you have a case history in which a large IT department
>> was replaced by a smaller group as the result of adopting APL?
>
> I think you've missed my point; I was saying that despite the strength
> of APL being able to reduce burocracy in IT, it simply does NOT happen
> !
>
> "" ..and is at the same time APL's big disadvantage in that the
> insecurity
> of IT managers is what makes them try to make themselves "independant"
> of the "specialist" by hiring a 10 fold burocracy - an existing APL
> discussion thread handles this one ! ""
>
> i.e. it does NOT happen, BECAUSE OF the above !!
>
> Do you "now" get my point ?

If it has never happened then why would any manager believe that it actually
_would_ happen? Managers see claims of "if you do this it will increase
productivity ten (or five or three or fifty or whatever) times" with great
regularity, and in general when they try it they find that it doesn't have
any effect at all or makes things worse, so they tend to view such claims
with great suspicion unless there are solid case histories that support
them.

Your assertion that it hasn't happened because managers are afraid that it
will happen comes across as rank paranoia.



--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

> In fact, have you ever seen an APL programming department with more
> than 3 programmers?

The company I work with has more than 15 APL developers, now, and we are
expanding... That's why we're hiring
--
WildHeart'2k5