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0 pointsddoolin11y ago0 comments

I'm just a regular web and app developer, but would it be at all possible to write a layer on top of k that makes it at least more readable while retaining most of the speed advantage?

To me, part of being an engineer is not taking offense when being told there are potentially better ways to do things, but at the same time I can understand why some people jump to that kind of statement since at first glance it seems like a regression of sorts, especially when the industry has a continuing history of trying to lower the entry barrier. Even though underneath the programming concepts may be revolutionary, people may also be quick to balk at it when it's in such a form (hence the first question).

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avmich11y ago

Industry does try to lower the barrier to entry. At the same time it strives to reach ever-higher tops. APL family of languages have a high barrier to entry - which is of course a problem - but even remaining novice in the language you can be routinely more efficient working with APL than working with another language. So - that high barrier to entry is a disadvantage, but for that you can have pretty high levels of efficiency in the same language going from newbie to intermediate to advanced levels.

geocar11y ago

I think this "readable" bit is the theory behind q which you can download from kx.com; Some people think it is more readable. q/kdb+ supports websockets and has a built-in http server so it is very possible to make web apps with it.

However I think there is value in the dense coding style that has nothing to do with it's performance: it's that it reduces bugs and helps you think about the problem.

ddoolinOP11y ago

You've sparked my interest, for sure. I'd love to pull it down and give it a whirl. Hell, one could conceivably write those things with K as well.

Thanks for the perspective. Good luck to you all with kOS and others.

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