What is the general consensus among GNU APL users here on the newer 'tacit style' that seems so prevalent in many online APL resources nowadays? ('forks', 'trains', etc.)
As a new, inexperienced APLer, exploring a bit more with GNU APL, I wonder if it discourages people new to APL to find, as I have, that so many resources online appear to be quite Dyalog-focused so the examples do not work as presented within GNU APL.
I am aware that GNU APL is an 'APL2' implementation for the most part, which is fine by itself and I think it is important to have this open-source, free implementation. However it concerns me somewhat that newcomers to GNU APL may be discouraged to find so many examples online that are incompatible.
Perhaps if I were myself experienced enough, I would write a GNU APL equivalent to the 'APL cart' (
aplcart.info) with a focus on translating common idioms from 'tacit style' to APL2 style. (Indeed, perhaps such resources exist and I apologize if I have merely not encountered them yet. I have yet to study in-depth the older 'Finn APL idiom library' and similar).
As for adding tacit style to GNU APL, I do not advocate one way or the other, as I do not have sufficient experience for an informed opinion. How much value would the 'tacit' syntax bring to GNU APL? Would it even be possible to add without breaking APL2 conformance?
I also see a lot of usage online of 'guards' within lambdas which GNU APL seems to lack -- would the language benefit from adding support for that or would many of you say it is just 'syntactic sugar'?
Just some thoughts from an APL newcomer. I enjoy it, and am grateful to Dr. Sauermann et al. for their hard work.
-Russ