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0 pointsicen3y ago0 comments

I think if you're looking at learning an array language in order to learn an array language, because of the oft-discussed change in perspective and technique, then I think BQN meets that very handily.

BQN is, in my opinion, the most slick of the array languages; it consistently takes the best of the approaches to high-rank arrays and combinator (including tacit) programming from the others. Some things are unique, and amazing, like structural under.

It is small, it is new, so I would agree with your hesitation to start a business based on it, but to understand these languages or use it for the typical small calculations, it is more than capable.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

HopenHeyHi3y ago· 2 in thread

Well, I read:

http://nsl.com/papers/origins.htm

https://github.com/zserge/odetoj

And watched a few neat videos on the concepts of APL. There's a black and white one on YouTube of a British fellow introducing it using a typewriter. :)

I vaguely get it, my beef with BQN besides being slow is that it is fledgling. And so I have no real excuse to play with it. Otherwise it seems like a holy grail, like, woah finally an APL/J/K to rule them all.

I've seen enough wide eyed salty lispers telling tales of white whales to fear for my sanity going on this quest. Need some sort of lie to buy into like "BQN beyond a superior array language is so fast you could bang out half a page of code in a few minutes and get insane performance and functionality that no mere mortals with their aliensquiggles-less languages can hardly even conceive of".

What kind of half assed cult are you running, haha. No, I refuse to get sucked in. You will not nerd snipe me. Must. Resist.

icenOP3y ago

Do you have any examples that come to mind of it being slow? My experience has been that I've been the slowest part of my code, by a long way.

Some optimisations aren't quite there (like under on higher rank arrays not being as fast as computing the indices on the flattened array), but everything else has been good.

HopenHeyHi3y ago

Notes from the creator on this subject: https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/implementation/perf.html

Abandoned half-finished rewrite of the BQN VM in Rust as is hipster tradition: https://github.com/cannadayr/rsbqn/

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