" ... one swallow does not make a summer ...": a successful APL system
or a useless non-apl system does not make the case for universal
endorsement or rejection. As far as I know, there is no single
methodology or language that guarantees a successful outcome;
however, failure is almost always attributable to bad project
management whether it is done formally or not, whether the language is
APL or not.
" ... the real world has changed ...": yes it is true that APL is much
more resilient in coping with mid-flight changes. However, I think it
is a myth that the real world changes so dramatically. If it does,
should not the application design parameterise the changes? This
argument was used quite a lot to justify the building of own-use
applications rather than wait for an IT department to schedule it, let
alone deliver it. All such applications that became 'im****tant' to the
organisation are in the queue for re-writing (or have been already):
the originator has retired, moved-on or found something more
interesting to do. The case for re-writing would be less credible if
the application had a GUI, a functional specification, a help file, a
knowledge base etc.
" ... perhaps formal accreditation or education is the answer ...": I
doubt this very much especially given the APL mindset that believes
that nothing non-apl is of any value. But 'education' does hold a key:
the mindset needs to recognise other tools and learn to co-exist and
it way i can leverage the unique qualities of APL.
A key question is this: "does APL teach you programming concepts?" or
"does it teach/enable you to solve (discete) problems?" I believe the
latter is true and in this respect, it is often wrongly perceived to
be a solution looking for a problem to solve.
It is a sad reflection that even with educational (or free) licences
for educational establishments, there is not one [in the UK] (that I
know of, but will be delighted to be proved wrong) that uses APL. I
know of several that use Haskell, Groovy, Java etc.
I don't know of any non-apl books that use APL (working code) to
illustrate concepts, except "Computer Architecture. Concepts and
Evolution" by GA Blaaw & FP Brooks (Mythical man-month fame): for the
authors, APL happened to be the best tool for the job to hand.
|
