Notation as a tool of thought

“You need this programming language…”

… at least, that’s what they tell you.

Iverson doesn’t tell you that, though. He sits with you. He shares what he is thinking. He shares his values. He provides examples. He lets you draw your own conclusion. This is unheard of today in the popular landscape of programming language bullies.

“Do you know what you value? Do you know what you want in programming languages? Do you know what you want to do with those languages?”

Most of us don’t have answers to those questions. They are worth answering.

While solving a problem we’ve all experienced the phenomenon where the complexity starts small, enlarges to its maximum as we spend time on it, and finally when we’ve spent a long time on it, the complexity returns to a small size. It is universal. Mark Twain said it better, like this:

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

What if the notation helps you get you there faster?

This is my impression of APL: that it does. This is my gut feeling.