Good points here. I think we agree at some level here. Putting aside practical readability, we can focus on "onboarding overhead." You're also right about community.
Obviously moving from C to Java or Java to C++ is going to be easier than moving to APL. We can both agree there, and agree that part of the reason is the relative similarity between Java and C. But it's actually much worse than it appears on the surface. Let me address some of your other points before getting back to this.
Every language and code snippet is hard to read without context. Indeed, some learning theories would argue that context is such an integral part of learning that the absorption of skills and understanding is deeply contextualized and so an isomorphic task may be impossible to someone simply because the task appears in an alien context. But that shared context is HUGE and people don't realize how much they rely on it.
APL is one of the most established languages around. It was designed initially in the 1950s, and has been actively used since then. It has always struggled with the computational community, despite its success with non-computer scientists, I argue, in part, because it fundamentally challenges, and has challenged, the perspectives of the status quo. Should APL become less APL-ish simply to become more popular? J was an attempt to preserve the ideas and fundamental concepts without using the funny symbols, about which people complained, it didn't change anything. People continued to dislike it and argue against it, because they are fighting against a challenge to their conception of how things are done. This is not so much a marketing problem as much as a group think problem. You cannot provide a new way of looking at something by changing your new way to be the old way to make people more comfortable with it. That's just a new name, not a new idea.
The syntax is a fundamentally good contribution to the state of computing, it was, and it still is. Remove that approach, or the underlying principles of Iverson's Notation as a Tool of Thought, and you are no longer contributing to the positive growth of the community's ideas. It is the fundamental idea of APL that people rebel against, but they simply use the syntax as a scapegoat.
If you read "notation as a tool of thought" it should become clear that the Elixir example you are presenting, which is one of the most common suggestions for APLers, doesn't work, and there is a reason that you don't see it around.
Syntax matters. That's a fundamental assertion of APL and its community. It's an obvious conclusion from HCI research, too. It is not possible to experience the full contribution of APL by ignoring its syntax and substituting one that makes you more comfortable. I tried. As a Schemer I did this. I realized that what I was using had none of the things that I valued APL for. By trying to utilize my own "syntax" for APL, I had lost the benefits and gains that APL provides. Syntax isn't just a method of communicating the ideas of APL, it is one of the fundamental ideas of APL. It is an expression of foundational principles of approaching communication of computation ideas.
For more on this idea, especially as it relates to your concepts of "people needing readable languages", please see some papers on direct development, a distinctly APL development methodology. Here are a couple:
Particularly the case of pair programming with users, they are direct experiential evidence countering the unreadability of APL for the new user. I have also done a small exploratory study on this subject:
The tentative conclusion we can draw from the above is that APL is not unreadable to the uninitiated, it is unreadable to computer scientists and programmers who are attached to their programming languages.
APL has a strong history of being readable and usable by the uninitiated non programmer. It has a horrible reputation of being liked by programmers who regularly use other programming languages.
And this brings us back to the first point. Our entire computing culture, from initial education onwards teaches us that APL's very ideas are "hard to use" and hard to understand. It's not just that APL lacks a shared context between Java and C, it's that the foundational execution model used when thinking about APL programs lacks a shared context between the rest of the traditional computing society and itself. Everything you learn in school about programming tells you that you should think this way about code, and APL proceeds to completely marginalize all of the things that you are used to considering important.
It is not hard to learn or use APL. People do so regularly and without struggle. It is hard to reject a way of thinking about the world that is constantly reinforced by C-style programming models for sequential processors.
It is not hard to read, it is hard/impossible to fit into the boxes that most programmers use when evaluating things. To use a bit of hyperbole, give up everything you think you know about computing, and then APL is easy to read/learn.
It's akin to an assembly language programmer being told to program with Agda, and that Agda really will give them a new and interesting and useful way of looking at the world. But then imagine everyone else being ASM programmers, too, and schools never teaching anything about Agda, but only teaching ASM (maybe one teaches PowerPC, one X86, but otherwise they're basically the same with some slight different instructions and syntax for their assemblers). Agda uses these weird greek symbols, and there are no instructions, and no one provides a simple Agda to ASM Rosetta stone and no one explains Agda in ASM programmer concepts so that we can understand the essence of Agda. And so on and so forth.
The evidence and research suggests that APL is distinctly hard for existing programmers to understand and learn, but not for most everyone else.
Thanks for the informative response. Your lecture looks very interesting, so I'll definitely be watching it. I think that the topic of CS education and rethinking the fundamentals is a very interesting problem.
I really enjoyed this discussion, so thanks again.
Thank the both of you for a thread of informative, intellectual, and highly civil discussion. Would only more of the internet engage in this form of discourse.
Obviously moving from C to Java or Java to C++ is going to be easier than moving to APL. We can both agree there, and agree that part of the reason is the relative similarity between Java and C. But it's actually much worse than it appears on the surface. Let me address some of your other points before getting back to this.
Every language and code snippet is hard to read without context. Indeed, some learning theories would argue that context is such an integral part of learning that the absorption of skills and understanding is deeply contextualized and so an isomorphic task may be impossible to someone simply because the task appears in an alien context. But that shared context is HUGE and people don't realize how much they rely on it.
APL is one of the most established languages around. It was designed initially in the 1950s, and has been actively used since then. It has always struggled with the computational community, despite its success with non-computer scientists, I argue, in part, because it fundamentally challenges, and has challenged, the perspectives of the status quo. Should APL become less APL-ish simply to become more popular? J was an attempt to preserve the ideas and fundamental concepts without using the funny symbols, about which people complained, it didn't change anything. People continued to dislike it and argue against it, because they are fighting against a challenge to their conception of how things are done. This is not so much a marketing problem as much as a group think problem. You cannot provide a new way of looking at something by changing your new way to be the old way to make people more comfortable with it. That's just a new name, not a new idea.
The syntax is a fundamentally good contribution to the state of computing, it was, and it still is. Remove that approach, or the underlying principles of Iverson's Notation as a Tool of Thought, and you are no longer contributing to the positive growth of the community's ideas. It is the fundamental idea of APL that people rebel against, but they simply use the syntax as a scapegoat.
If you read "notation as a tool of thought" it should become clear that the Elixir example you are presenting, which is one of the most common suggestions for APLers, doesn't work, and there is a reason that you don't see it around.
Syntax matters. That's a fundamental assertion of APL and its community. It's an obvious conclusion from HCI research, too. It is not possible to experience the full contribution of APL by ignoring its syntax and substituting one that makes you more comfortable. I tried. As a Schemer I did this. I realized that what I was using had none of the things that I valued APL for. By trying to utilize my own "syntax" for APL, I had lost the benefits and gains that APL provides. Syntax isn't just a method of communicating the ideas of APL, it is one of the fundamental ideas of APL. It is an expression of foundational principles of approaching communication of computation ideas.
For more on this idea, especially as it relates to your concepts of "people needing readable languages", please see some papers on direct development, a distinctly APL development methodology. Here are a couple:
http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10009900 http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10500550
Particularly the case of pair programming with users, they are direct experiential evidence countering the unreadability of APL for the new user. I have also done a small exploratory study on this subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIItfQJEVdM
The tentative conclusion we can draw from the above is that APL is not unreadable to the uninitiated, it is unreadable to computer scientists and programmers who are attached to their programming languages.
APL has a strong history of being readable and usable by the uninitiated non programmer. It has a horrible reputation of being liked by programmers who regularly use other programming languages.
And this brings us back to the first point. Our entire computing culture, from initial education onwards teaches us that APL's very ideas are "hard to use" and hard to understand. It's not just that APL lacks a shared context between Java and C, it's that the foundational execution model used when thinking about APL programs lacks a shared context between the rest of the traditional computing society and itself. Everything you learn in school about programming tells you that you should think this way about code, and APL proceeds to completely marginalize all of the things that you are used to considering important.
It is not hard to learn or use APL. People do so regularly and without struggle. It is hard to reject a way of thinking about the world that is constantly reinforced by C-style programming models for sequential processors.
It is not hard to read, it is hard/impossible to fit into the boxes that most programmers use when evaluating things. To use a bit of hyperbole, give up everything you think you know about computing, and then APL is easy to read/learn.
It's akin to an assembly language programmer being told to program with Agda, and that Agda really will give them a new and interesting and useful way of looking at the world. But then imagine everyone else being ASM programmers, too, and schools never teaching anything about Agda, but only teaching ASM (maybe one teaches PowerPC, one X86, but otherwise they're basically the same with some slight different instructions and syntax for their assemblers). Agda uses these weird greek symbols, and there are no instructions, and no one provides a simple Agda to ASM Rosetta stone and no one explains Agda in ASM programmer concepts so that we can understand the essence of Agda. And so on and so forth.
The evidence and research suggests that APL is distinctly hard for existing programmers to understand and learn, but not for most everyone else.