Ever since coming across this maddness I've found J and the APL family of languages quite interesting. To the unfamiliar the beginnings of the J interpreter look to be something akin to an IOCCC entry. But then how and why would brilliant sounding guys like Ken Iverson and Arthur Whitney be coding like this? Through a bit of research I've learned that this style can actually make code much simpler to read, almost like a book in fact. Or that's the claim at least. I've yet to really make any headway with that fragment, so I myself am not a yet a convert. Perhaps actually learning an APLish language will help.
I've briefly touched on J off and on over the years but never really buckled down. This time around I'm switching to one of it's successors, Q. A free 32 bit version of the interpreter (and kdb+) can be found here. On Linux, simply extract it to where you want it to reside, set $QHOME to that location, and put $QHOME/l32 in your shell's path. Run "q" and you're good to go. If your machine is running a 64 bit OS you will need 32 bit compatibility libraries however.
I've already started in on this tutorial. So far so good.
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