No es :from the.Co-Bd:l. on - - R a y Polivlza a n d r e a M c G r ~ The past, present, and future of J focuses on the APL derivative language, J. For those of you who are new to J, let us point out to you that J was originally devised ten years ago by Ken Iverson, the creator of the APL language. Ken is now part of a team working on the development of J in Toronto. W e are pleased to be able to show you the J team on our cover. In these first ten years that J has been available to the programming community, some APL users have embraced the new language, while others have been slow to move in that direction. In this issue, we would like to reintroduce theJ language to the APL audience, and repeat a bit of the introductory information that some of the APL users may have missed when it originally appeared. One of the stumbling blocks in moving to a new language--even one with roots in APL--is new terminology which must be learned. This issue will bring you up to date with those terms. You may already have studied adverbs and conjunctions (as they apply to J), but have you read about tacit programming? Do you understand forks and hooks?...Trains.~ None of these concepts are difficult--they simply require an understanding of some new terminology. So where does someone new to the language learn the terminology? Well, as we ]ooked to find which papers would appropriately introduce J to APL programmers, we found that all of this--and more--had already been covered, in a paper published back in 1991 in a special APL-focus issue of the IBM ~3stems ~7ournal. The paper was "A Personal View ofAPL, '~ by Kenneth Ivcrson, who created both APL andJ. T h e paper gave an overview of both languages, and introduced many of the fundamental points of J that a newcomer to the language needs to know, so it is stillvery rdevant today. That issue of the IBM S3~tems jTournal (VoL 30, No. 4) was published back in x99x to commemorate the twenty-flfth anniversary of the APL language. W e are pleased to be able to reprint that paper here, and make it available to a new audience, through the kind ~ System5 douma! ~ ~ ~ . ±:,'. , T HIS ISSUE OF APL QUOTE QUAD permissionofy sEditorsof the I B Monl the t e m s Jua rs ~ ~ ~ ~ Next, Keith Smillie, Professor Emeritus of Computing Science at the Unlvcrsity of Alberta in Edmonton, prorides us with "A Lecture on Array Languages." Many of you may already know Keith as a interesting writer. Here, his tracing of languages showsJ in an historical perspective. This paper is actually the one that first got us thinking about creating a Jfocus issue. W e think you'll enjoy this. For the decade that J has been available, it has always been tue practice of APL QuoLe Quad to publish articles on both APL and J; in fact, the first introduction of APL to the genera] public was right here in the pages of APL Quote Quad. In this issue, we are placing most of our focus onJ. W e welcome papers on APL andJ and other related languages. In the future, our issues will continue to feature some of each. We have talked about the past and present o f A P L a n d J . . , what does thef'agure look like? Ken Iverson addresses this in his new paper, entitled "APL In the New Millennium." In the remainder of the issue, regular contributors CliffRelter, Eke van Batenburg, and Walt Neihoffdemons trate both./and APL in action. W e hope thatthis material is useful toyou .... Le~ ~ ]now.~ • Just for fun THE PINHEAD is a long-running, well-established cartoon series, seen in newspapers across the U.S. One of Zippy's episodes in particular caught our eye a while back. W e present it here--unaltered--just in case it somehow has some bearing on the discussions of this issue . . . . We're just not really sure .... Our thanks to the cartoon's creator~ Bill Griffth, for granting us permission to reprint his work here. i z IPPY • I Reprintedbyperrnisslon MJutcH ~ooo - - VOLUME30, NUMsEa3

/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/a-focus-on-j-past-present-and-future-f0aG0eDxTt