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From: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
In-Reply-To: <5cff6c39f36c28829ae14b075b7192d1@proxima.alt.za>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:48:08 -0800
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To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] c++
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On Nov 22, 2012, at 10:12 AM, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:

>> I remembering finding Iverson's book "A Programming Language" quite =
interesting.
>=20
> I don't remember the book any more, but I did read the library copy in
> its entirety, maybe even more than once and was thrilled when the
> university almost accidentally got an APL interpreter from Univac for
> their 1106.  It got me into real trouble with the cycle counters, it
> was expensive to run and interactive time was even more expensive.

At school I had a part time job with a cancer epidemiology group
(associated with the same school). I used up so much of their "funny
money" at the school computer center (all IBM computers with
expensive compute time) by using APL, I had to drop back to using
PL/I for them! The thing is, you make far fewer mistakes in APL but
they can cause a lot more damage! I wonder if the financial "quants"
made such mistakes in 2008 :-)

> Today it is just a topic for nostalgic conversation, but it really
> made a difference to me, it was as if a switch had been thrown in my
> head.

Iverson's papers are still very useful when programming in APL2 or
languages like k, j or q.=