🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Giles:
   By the way, at this point I've spent about the same amount of time
   studying Haskell as J - cumulatively about five hours each.  I find
   Haskell much more legible and easy to use (which isn't saying
   much).  Given that Haskell is a strict functional language and J
   isn't, if the argument is that there is an advantage to functional
   programming, then Haskell must be better according to that measure.

You've left out an important piece of information:  how did you study?

J's language spec isn't a good place to start -- it's a reference
manual.  It's better to go with something written to teach the
language (and it's also good to have a machine to play with the
concepts).

J's style of programming _is_ a bit different than what is
traditionally used.  Where it shines is in applicative code:  If
you've a specific problem space, it's usually possible to pick a dozen
or so operations which are particularly suited for describing problems
in that space.  [Which is what I presume you were talking about when
you said it seemed like a fancy calculator.]

J falls down when you're trying to present "traditional programming
concepts".  J just isn't efficient enough when you use it to emulate a
traditional language.  It can do recursion and iterations and all that
sort of thing -- but there's a heavy slant towards solving the general
case of a problem instead of solving the specific case.  And, for lots
of people, "that just ain't the way things are done around here".

-- 
Raul Deluth Miller-Rockwell                   <rockwell@socrates.umd.edu>