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The A+ Programming Language : programming
First in a series of 500 programming languages to be reviewed and programmed in.
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I wonder if he'll finish 500 languages.
I mean, even if he does one a day it'll still take well over a year, and it took him a week to get the first one up.
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I'm the author of Probably Programming, and yeah, I'm hoping that it doesn't take 10 years (the length it would take if it took a week for each post).
I'm aiming for more along the lines of 2 years completion time.
This first language just took me way to much time to figure out the text-encoding and entry issues.
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Don't know why this was downvoted.
I've always found APL and APL-ish languages too much of a bother to learn, but this was an interesting review in its own right.
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The language uses a healthy subset of the crazy hieroglyphs included in APL, and requires a special font for properly displaying the special characters.
It’s also possible to use one of two ASCII-based modes when programming in A+, but where’s the fun in that?
I think the "fun in that" is being able to actually type the program code in the first place.
I've said it before and I'll say it again;
I'm never going to use a programming language that requires me to use symbols that do not appear on my keyboard.
Having programmed on macs that don't have a "#" key, I have found just missing one rarely-used (in C-like languages) symbol is frustrating enough, I couldn't imagine using a language that required frequent use of multi-key chords or an on screen character pallette.
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I'm thinking the glyphs could be an advantage if you are using an stylus or virtual keyboard in a tablet PC or smartphone, where the less you have to type the better (and you don't have a physical keyboard anyway).
Also code density wins if you are using something with little screen space.
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Scenarios which are not really likely to be the workplace of any programmer anyway.
As happens with Fortress, the only advantage would be to make specification and implementation as similar as possible.
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So potentially useful on a portable device, like a handheld console or smartphone, but disadvantageous on the kind of computing environments it's designed for.
Hmm.
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Just a question...
When has there ever been a mac released without the # right over the 3 like on every other computer?
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In the UK. That position is used for the "£" symbol on UK keyboards, with "#" sharing a key with "~" on the left-hand side of the middle row on standard UK keyboards.
Apple's UK keyboard layout is non-standard in many ways, such as having "@" and """ in their "US" positions (these are swapped on the standard layout) and, as I mentioned, losing the "#" key altogether.
(At least on the keyboard shipped with recent iMacs.)
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This is pathetic.
I give it the worst possible grade: An A--!
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Ah, you beat me to the joke.
I meant to put that somewhere in the post, but neglected it after being up for over 24 hours :)
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This language is retarded.
Special symbols? Looks like a chore to program in.
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Once you get used to where they symbols are, it's not much worse than using shift-[ to type a {, assuming you map some key (I used right-alt) to be the APL modifier.
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Another feature A+ adds is the ability to set up dependencies between variables, so when a depended-upon variable is changed, the dependent variable changes as well.
This allows for spreadsheet-like or reactive programming, with barely any effort.
This sounds like an interesting feature.
Do any other languages offer this sort of thing?
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There's a whole list of languages that work with that same principle at the bottom of this page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming
There are several of them on my list, so I'll be getting to them eventually.
It'll take me a while to get all the way down to the L's where they seems to start.
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Thanks for replying.
I've heard of Single Assignment C before and it looks like it's the most interesting for me - maybe I'll have a look at it when I get the time...
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If you know Common Lisp, you may find Cells interesting: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
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