🚀 go-pugleaf

> Aren't interpreted languages popular?!

Yes, interpreted languages are popular!

A recent survey of occupations in the United States says that
there are about a half million programming jobs.

One vice president at a major supplier of APL, estimates that
there are about 80,000 APL programmers, but possibly not all
of these would classify their jobs as as "programming".  These
may include people who work in some other profession, but who
use APL extensively.

> > Aren't interpreted languages popular?!
> 
> Yes, interpreted languages are popular!
> 
Its not that they're popular, its that they're more fun.

And C programmers are going to discover this any day now.  I just
completed a review of 3 C interpreters and I'm getting several more to
look at.  These interpreters behave just like APL or Lisp, in that they
are completely interactive.

I won't mention the advantages of APL here - that would be pointless,
but having a C interpreter means you can take your development code and
compile it into very fast code, you don't need a large runtime, you
don't use funky symbols and you can interface easily with the rest of the
universe.  

On the other hand, so what?  C programmers finally have the same tools
that APL programmers had 20 years ago.  But when is APL going to move
forward?

Don Libes       {seismo,umcp-cs}!nbs-amrf!libes

> On the other hand, so what?  C programmers finally have the same tools
> that APL programmers had 20 years ago.  But when is APL going to move
> forward?


Would you say that any of these ideas represent a step forward:

	Nested Arrays, as introduced in APL2 from IBM?
	Enclosed Arrays, as implemented by I.P.Sharp Associates?
	NARS, as implemented by STSC?
	NIAL, the Nested Interactive Array Language from Queens?

Would you say that APL compilers represent a step forward?
	There are at least two, that I know of, one from STSC and 
	and one from Arizona.

-- 
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