APLers Circle the Wagons at Tool of Thought X --by Richard Q. Wendt, FSA, CFA Philade~hia, Pennsylvania HE PICTURESQUESETrINGIN HOBOKENadded to the surrealism. For a day in January, it was an unusually cloudless sky with a beautiful view of the New York skyline, bracketed by a cruise finer up-river and a sailboat downriver. Inside the conference center at Stevens Tech, APLers were convincing each other that APL was the best, had no serious disadvantages and that APLers were smarter, quicker and had more fun. In the outside world, life went on, as usual. Although I have been using APL since the early eighties, this was my first Tool of Thought meeting, sponsored by the NY SIGAPL. It was a delight to meet many of the famous names in the APL world. This included Ray Polivka, who drafted me to write this summary. Approximately 100 enthusiasts gathered in the picturesque setting to learn about new and old APL ideas. The format consisted of opening and dosing general sessions and four breakout sessions. Participants could choose among financial applications, mathematical analysis and APL enhancements. The opening and closing sessions served as bookends to the session. Eric Baden, of APL2000, told participants that they could be successful in A P L and that A_PL had no real disadvantages. You too, could be a success with APL. Gary Bergquist, of Zark, spoke at the closing session (a total of three sessions for Gary, but he kept the audience well entertained throughout). Gary's theme was that APLers were special (although he didn't want to be called an "APLer") and their productivity was hundreds of times better than COBOL programmers' productivity. After listening to Gary's talk, the group couldn't help but go off to conquer the programming world with APL. Bergquist also did a breakout session on Windows for APL. Gary did a "virtual demo" of his concepts, which required the session participants to dose their eyes and imagine what Gary was describing: "Open a window, resize and move the window." Amazingly, the demo not only looks perfect, but matches each user's requirements! As his approach provides a full-featured product demo without any development expense, it's sure to catch on with software vendors. The "look and feel" is only limited by the listeners' imagination. Of course, the software support unit may need to have psychic ability. T Alan Graham, Ray Polivka, and Stephen Mansour discussthe conference Bob Bemecky's breakout session covered the development of an APL compiler. Bob has developed a multi-stage approach to convert APL code to Sisal to C. Since I have never heard of Sisal, it probably sounded more complicated to me than Bob intended. The net result is speeds matching or exceeding Fortran source code. Bob indicated that compiled APL could be integrated with interactive APL, giving the user the best of both worlds. Phil Benkard asked everyone to update their APL White Pages listing. The fact that the very existence of the APL White Pages is a negative success indicator was apparently lost on the audience. That we even attempt a census of APLers shows what a small group of survivors we are. Imagine trying to count all the C++ programmers in the world! In summary, I was stimulated by the seminar, but left with a feeling that the speakers were "preaching to the choir" and the session would have tittle impact on the outside world. Little new blood is likely to enter the APL community unless there's a major paradigm shift in the programming world. • Richard Q. Wendt can be reached at "Wendt~Towers.com': Eric Baelen explains how 7CanSucceedwffhAPL---andSo Can You." DECEMBER X997-- VOLtrME NUMBEB a8, S

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