On Fri, 15 Jan 2021, Nemo Nusquam via cctalk wrote:
As a grad student, I still remember the row of APL terminals at the computer
centre with their APL-specific keyboards, always ruing that I had no time to
learn it.
I guess that I was lucky?
At GSFC, I was in an entry level job ("Data Technician"), having EAM
experience and some FORTRAN, being paid as a go-fer, but being expected to
learn and do more and more stuff. Such as simple FORTRAN to draw graphs
on Calcomp plotters.
I had some calculations to do, and THE calculator (on a typewriter cart)
was in use elsewhere.
One of my senior cow-orkers (a programmer) spent about a minute showing me
that you could do routine arithmetic in APL.
So, it only took a few minutes before it was saving me time and effort.
After I was using it for calculator work for a little while, he came back
and showed me how to write simple programs, and got me access to some
manuals.
I was never GREAT, but I found it easy to learn new stuff in it. I had
been fascinated with matrix algebra in high school, and was thrilled to
see some of the things that APL could do.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
