Vector

The new website is live

2011-03-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

The rebuilt Vector website is now in production, with a thorough reworking of the archive, and a new search tool.

It has its own blog, so this is the last post to this one. If you’ve been subscribing to this RSS feed, go to

https://sites.google.com/site/baavector/blog

and add the new feed to your RSS aggregator.

Cheers
Stephen Taylor

A commentary on the formulator

2010-12-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

Out now on Vector: Neville Holmes elaborates on his scheme for a commodity calculator

No stinking loops

2010-11-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

Out now on Vector: Stevan Apter, one of the programmers Jeffry Borror refers to as “the q gods”, kicks off his new column No Stinking Loops with “Treetable: a case study in q”

Out now on Vector

2010-11-21T13:57:00.000-08:00

Six new articles posted:

The view from Berlin Roving reporter Mike Hughes sends us a postcard from APL2010. Devon McCormick shares his notes with us. Graeme Robertson offers a personal view. Vibeke Ulmann tells us what she liked best.

Chairman’s report 2010 BAA chairman Paul Grosvenor reviews the year.

Remembering Eugene McDonnell Roger Hui celebrates the late APL pioneer and Vector columnist

Vector 24, Nos 2 & 3

2010-09-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Vector 24, Nos 2&3, a bumper double issue, is in the post to subscribers.

APL2000 announces APL+Win 10

2010-09-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

Version 10 provides more speed, support for larger workspaces and larger arrays enabling a whole new level of performance

Rockville, MD – September 13, 2010 --- APLNow LLC announced today the release of APL+WIN Version 10. This latest version of their popular APL+WIN product, an implementation of the APL application programming language product for the Windows platform, offers breakthrough performance improvements through faster overall execution speed, support for larger workspaces and larger arrays. Additional enhancements included in this version enable multi-thread processing, provide an application recovery tool and enhance the error handling and debugging processes.

Highlights of APL+WIN V10 include:
• Scalar and array operations run 30% to 50% faster
• Workspaces as large as 2.6 GB on 32 bit PCs and 3.6 GB on 64-bit PCs
• Support for a 10-fold increase in array size
• New APLSupervisor enabling concurrent execution on multi-core machines
• New and enhanced error handling, debugging facility and control structures

For information: www.apl2000.com
Contact: Sonia Beekman at sales@apl2000.com
Phone: 301-208-7150

First contact!

2010-08-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

Morten Kromberg and Roger Hui duke it out in cyberspace in this sci-fi epic

How the mathematicians won the war

2010-08-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

Keith Smillie pits J and his wits against he famous cipher machine in Simulating the Enigma. Online now.

The Year 1998

2010-08-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

Neville Holmes concludes his series “Functional calculation in J” with The Year 1998. Online now.

Winners of Dyalog 2010 programming contest

2010-08-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

Dyalog has announced the winners of its 2010 programming contest: Ryan Tarpine from Browns University, (USA), Mstislav Elagin from Humboldt University (Germany) and Joel Hough from Salt Lake Community College (USA). A Special Effort award was made to Alexander Ivanov from the Moscow Institute for Physical Research (Russia).

Ryan Tarpine will be at the APL2010 conference in Berlin.

Eugene McDonnell 1926-2010

2010-08-19T02:33:00.000-07:00

Eugene McDonnell, computer science pioneer has passed away. For many years he wrote the Vector column “At Play With J” recently collected and published by Vector Books.

Gene McDonnell died yesterday evening at home. Friends and family members were gathered, reminiscing, when Gene’s caretaker (since a stroke last week left him unconscious) came into the room to say “I think he’s passing.” And so it was.

Gene was a family man, utterly decent, generous, kindhearted; also erudite and witty. His contributions to APL were graceful as well as useful. I’m so grateful to have known and worked with him.

The McDonnell family is planning a memorial gathering at home, Sunday August 29. Jeanne can be reached at 1509 Portola, Palo Alto, 94306; phone 650 321-5260.

[Larry Breed]

Eugene McDonnell died peacefully at home in Palo Alto in the evening of August 17, surrounded by family and friends. All of us in the APL world owe him a debt for his pioneering work in APL.

I recently had the honor of writing the preface to Eugene’s “At Work and Play with J” (a collaborative editing effort of the J community and a work of which Eugene was very proud). I reproduce it here because it gives a sense of the man and his work.

In my youth, when I was just starting in APL, on receiving an issue of the APL Quote-Quad I would inevitably and eagerly first turn to Eugene McDonnell’s “Recreational APL” column. Through these columns I learned that it was possible for technical writing to be erudite, educational, and entertaining, and through them I learned a lot of APL.

Thus it was with Eugene’s “At Play with J” articles in Vector. In topics ranging from primes to permutations to pyramids to pi, with a cast of characters that included Apter, Black, and Crelle, Jacob and Josephus, Blanda and Montana and Taylor, and Scholes, the articles offered up the “smoother pebbles” and “prettier shells” found while playing on the seashore bordering the great ocean of knowledge. And we are all beneficiaries of this play.

I am pleased that Vector is publishing the collection of At Play With J as a book. I look forward to being educated and entertained once more.

[Roger Hui]

Ken Iverson’s blackboard from his days at IPSA

2010-08-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

From Peter Wooster at the group APL – A Programming Language at LinkedIn.com:

This blackboard was in Ken's office the '80s at IPSA. After that it was in Bob Bernecky's office and Tony Bailey's, I'm not sure if Benoit Paquin had if for a while or not. After the separation of Soliton, I inherited it and removed Tony's batman stickers and kept it in my office at Reuters until they eventually shut us down. The blackboard is on a wall in my studio and will remain there unless someone else wants it. It has plenty of chalk and a couple of erasers. It's still in excellent condition.

If you can come to Oakville and pick it up, it's yours.

Embedding APL fonts in web pages

2010-07-14T03:05:00.000-07:00

Kai Jaeger was bowled over to see the FinnAPL Idiom Library displayed correctly on my iPhone – and using the elegant APL385 Unicode font.

His article on how to embed APL fonts in web documents is online now.

Dyalog in Toronto 29 July

2010-07-10T23:48:00.000-07:00

APL Borealis and Dyalog Ltd are pleased to present:

TWO APL EVENTS in one day! - featuring DYALOG APL - July 29, downtown Toronto:

APL & Excel Integration - a morning mini-workshop on the key components of using APL & Excel together for application development. (9am to noon, includes a take-home toolkit*) Details

Dialogue with Dyalog – a full afternoon of presentations – with Morten Kromberg & Daniel Baronet – who will bring you up to date on all the latest features of Dyalog APL – learn how it can power your business applications. (1:00 to 5:30pm) Details

Location: Learning Tree Intl, 1 Dundas Street W., 10th Floor, Toronto (Yonge & Dundas)
Date: Thursday, 29 July

RSVP essential

Space is limited – please contact us to register for either of these events as soon as possible.

RSVP or further info:
Richard Procter, APL Borealis, tel: 1-866-888-6377
Brian Oliver, APL Borealis, tel: 416-488-7828
email: info@aplborealis.com

Java vs K

2010-07-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

Google engineer Michael Schidlowsky has posted a screencast at New York University comparing the Java and K programming languages. (Kudos to Stevan Apter.)

News from Dyalog

2010-06-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

Dyalog has posted its summer newsletter.

APL2010 programme published

2010-06-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

APL2010 has published its programme.

BAPLA09 presentations online

2010-06-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Presentations from the BAPLA09 conference in Reading have been posted online.

STAC releases new market data benchmark with results from Kx and Oracle

2010-06-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC®) today released STAC-M3TM Benchmark results for a solution from Kx Systems and Oracle Corporation. STAC-M3 provides a common measuring methodology for solutions that manage large timeseries datasets (tick databases). The measurement standard is currently a community proposal developed by the STAC Benchmark Council, comprised of trading organizations and vendors. The Council defines a series of standard benchmarks for capital market workloads, though interestingly only trading organizations - and not vendors - can approve specific tests, which ensures the benchmarks have relevance to real-world trading demands. To complete the inaugural benchmark testing on timeseries data, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) worked with Kx Systems, using Kx’s kdb+. The results have now set the standard for a series of benchmark tests to be carried out over the next few months.

The ability to quickly analyze timeseries of price and trade data is crucial for firms which trade financial instruments such as stocks, currencies, options and other derivatives. The growth of high-frequency trading makes it important for firms to rapidly store, retrieve and analyze massive quantities of data in order to back-test new trading algorithms, monitor their risk, and satisfy regulatory demands. At the same time, surging data volumes brought about by computerized trading make these tasks increasingly challenging in markets which can ‘tick’ (publish changes to prices) millions of times per second.

Peter Lankford, founder & director of STAC, said: "We're pleased that Kx and Oracle have taken the lead in publishing STAC-M3 Benchmarks. This testing responds to a direct need for performance data expressed by some of the world's leading financial institutions. We look forward to further benchmark results from Kx and Oracle, as well as other vendors of software and hardware that can be used for managing large timeseries of data.”

Simon Garland, Kx chief strategist, said: “We have worked closely with STAC and Oracle to create benchmarks. Going forward, the benchmarks will give financial institutions clearly defined criteria for measuring the performance of their systems. When setting up large, critical databases people need to be sure that the configuration they use is delivering the best possible performance within their hardware and software constraints. The problem is nobody has the time and resources to do an in-depth evaluation of all the alternatives and ideally to regularly revisit the chosen solution. These new benchmarks from STAC are valuable components of these decisions."

This series of tests is designed to set a standard for future benchmarks to be carried out by STAC in conjunction with various vendors. The results are vital for financial institutions needing to address their CEP requirements, facing the pressures of constantly increasing data volumes and regulatory demands. The STAC-M3 Benchmark suite is the first benchmark standard for market data timeseries (tick) databases, allowing vendors to measure their performance and financial institutions to test their own systems.

The STAC-M3 Benchmark standards will accelerate market selection of new technologies by enabling user firms and vendors to measure the performance of their database solutions in a common way. Trading firms will be able to quickly assess the benefit of innovations at all layers of the tick-database ‘stack’ including application software, operating systems, processors, servers, and storage architectures.

Amir Halfon, Oracle’s senior director of financial services technology, added: “Oracle’s unique storage server, the Sun Fire X4540, allowed us to achieve extreme performance with Kx by placing the data as close to the CPUs as possible. The Sun Fire X4540 provides fast, high throughput access between the threads of execution and the storage subsystem, offering up to 96TB of storage in a compact, cost-effective package. The tight integration between compute and storage within the Sun Fire X4540 eliminates the need for an external SAN and provides an ideal platform for high-performance analytics solutions such as Kx kdb+.”

The STAC-verified benchmarks were carried out using Kx kdb+ v2.6 on the Oracle Sun Fire X4540 storage server using version 0.92 of the STAC-M3 Benchmark specifications. STAC-M3 v0.92 has been submitted to the full Council for ratification, and a vote is pending.

The benchmark report is available at www.STACresearch.com/kx.

News from Kx Systems

2010-06-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

New kdb+ version
Within the next few weeks, Kx will release v2.7, a significant update to kdb+, which includes file compression. A beta version is already available to licensed users at kxdownloads.com.

Reuters feed handler
Another major enhancement to kdb+ is a new library which enables access to RMDS (Reuters Market Data System) market data, versions 5 and 6. This is for licensed kdb+tick users, and is an almost drop-in replacement for the classical SSL library previously provided by Kx.

Computerworld Honor Award 2010
Kx was nominated as a Laureate by Morgan Stanley, as an innovative technology company. We attended the Medal Ceremony and Gala Awards Dinner in Washington on 7th June. Photos can be seen at the Computerworld Honors Program 2010 website. Read more about it.

Kx customer receptions
We regret that we were forced to cancel the Kx London Customer Reception and Workshop this year due to the volcanic ash clouds. We consider face to face time with you essential, and are planning meetings in London and New York over the next few months. Please contact us if you would like us to visit your firm.

Kx in Asia
In January 2010 we participated in TradeTech China, where Head of Kx Asia, Chris Burke, was one of the technology panelists discussing how to leverage the latest technology solutions and trading platforms to enhance profitability and efficiency.

We will be exhibiting at Trading Architecture Asia, Hong Kong, 1-2 September 2010. Please visit our booth - we look forward to seeing you and your colleagues. Read more.

We are planning a technical meeting in Singapore in the first week of October, with Charlie Skelton, Kx Chief Technology Officer. Please contact us for more details.

Kx in the media
Kx customers rated us highly in Aite Group’s report, “Quant Strategy Development Playgrounds: The High Performance Database Sandbox” Read more. Simon Garland, Kx Chief Strategist, is quoted in Securities Industry News in an article: “Algos Take Hold in Fixed-Income Markets”. We have also received media coverage in Market Data Insight, Asia Etrading, and Bobsguide.com among others.

Updated material on Kx.com
Please see the 2010 versions of the FAQ and White Paper.

For more information about Kx and its products
Email us at info@kx.com with any questions or requests for information.

First Derivatives announces kdb+ training courses

2010-06-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

My name is Nathan Perrem and I am the head kdb+ trainer at First Derivatives. I will be hosting public kdb+ training in New York and London on the following dates in June/July 2010:

New York
21st, 22nd, 23rd June: q Fundamentals
24th, 25th, 28th June: q for gods
29th, 30th June, 1st July: q for DBAs

London
5th, 6th, 7th July: q Fundamentals
8th, 9th, 12th July: q for gods
13th, 14th, 15th July: q for DBAs

See the syllabus for these courses, and the dates for all remaining public courses in 2010.

We also provide customized on-site training for clients.

For further information on our training courses please contact me.

Kind Regards,
Nathan Perrem

Nathan Perrem
Kdb+ Trainer/Consultant
First Derivatives plc
(m) 917-453-0008
nperrem@firstderivatives.com

Film Synopsis

2010-06-09T06:48:00.000-07:00

Are you curious about why I have put my entire life on hold to make a film about the APL array language family?

This is WHY:

Film Synopsis

Direct Development: its time at last?

2010-06-09T00:26:00.000-07:00

Public spending in Britain is under harsher and harsher scrutiny. Time at last for lightweight development?

Rosetta Challenge tasks added to the 2010 Dyalog Programming Contest

2010-06-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

In response to feedback suggesting that the suite of tasks in the 2010 Dyalog Programming Contest appears to be a little more comprehensive than many students have time for at this busy part of the academic year, we have decided to add a ‘Rosetta Code Challenge’ to the 2010 Programming Contest, which will run in parallel with the main programming competition. Six weeks remain until the submission deadline on July 18th.

Rosettacode.org is a site which presents solutions to the same (nearly 400) tasks in as many different programming languages as possible. At this time, a relatively small number of solutions have been posted in APL, so we are keen to encourage APL users to submit more APL solutions. To this end, we are offering a USD 250 prize for the best solution to each of the following five (fun!) problems selected from rosettacode.org:

1. Animate a pendulum
2. Knapsack problem
3. Happy numbers
4. Hofstadter-Conway sequence
5. Monty Hall problem

See the Rosetta Code Challenge page for more details on how to participate. The terms and conditions of the main programming competition are not affected by the Rosetta Code Challenge, with the exception that anyone who submits solutions for two or more tasks in EITHER competition will participate in the drawing for the 20 consolation prizes worth USD 100 each.

As is the case for the main Dyalog Programming Contest, you can win the same amount of prize money by referring a winner to the competition as you can by actually participating. While prize winners must be eligible for an Educational License for Dyalog APL, anyone can win referral awards! Be the person who refers the winners for all five Rosetta Challenge tasks and you could win USD 1,250!

Best Regards,

Morten Kromberg
CTO, Dyalog Ltd

Annual General Meeting 2010

2010-05-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

The minutes of the 2010 Annual General Meeting of the British APL Association are online.

Mastering Dyalog APL

2010-05-24T08:15:00.000-07:00

Dyalog has published Bernard Legrand’s compendious Mastering Dyalog APL, probably the best modern introduction to APL available. Buy all 796 pages of it from Amazon, or download it free of charge from its companion site.

Wasted on the boards

2010-05-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Howard Peelle continues calculating his way through backgammon. New article.

Richard Lathwell confesses

2010-05-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

My father mentions that he taught Benoit Mandelbrot APL

Dyalog announces 2010 conference

2010-05-05T02:13:00.000-07:00

This year, Dyalog is holding it's annual User Conference as part of the global APL2010 conference organised by APL-Club Germany. This provides us with an opportunity to meet with users of other APL systems, and other "array languages" like J and K. With luck, it will be the largest gathering of array language users for some time!

You can contribute by submitting refereed papers and other contributions in response to the APL2010 Call for papers (see http://www.apl2010.de for more details). The first hard deadline for submissions is on May 15th, where you need to provide a one page abstract.

Dyalog intends to submit 5 or 6 papers on recent R&D work to the main conference in this fashion. We expect to be talking about recent and upcoming features of Dyalog products, such as:

- Designing a new APL System for the Microsoft.Net platform (APL#)
- Support for 128-bit Decimal Floating Point Data
- Abolishing "FILE DAMAGED" using Component File Journaling
- Parallel Processing using PEACH and PRANK
- Cross-Platform APL Keyboard support
- Support for Regular Expressions in Dyalog APL

We will also have a number of things to demonstrate and talk about that won't be ready to write about in the context of the refereed part of the conference. We'll cover these in our own streams which will run in parallel (but co-ordinated) with the main APL2010 streams. We also invite you to contribute to these streams - please write to conference@dyalog.com if you would like to present something at the conference but prefer to do it "as part of the Dyalog Conference".

As usual, we are very keen to hear from our users regarding problems solved (or still unresolved), using Dyalog APL. In particular, we are interested in hearing from users who can share experiences with features recently added to Dyalog APL, such as:

- Unicode and 64-bit Migrations
- Object Orientated Programming
- Web Servers, Web Services, Encryption and Secure Communications
- Source Code Management
- Using the Microsoft.Net Framework

If you have recent work that you are willing to share, please let us know.

Finally, we will be running workshops and training courses during the conference. We will probably have a bit less time available for these than we set aside in a normal Dyalog Conference, so we are very keen to get some input on courses or workshops that you would like to see. Again, please write to conference@dyalog.com with your suggestions.

We hope that you will participate in making the event a success, either by attending or contributing "content" to the conference - and that we will see many of you in Berlin in September!

Regards,

Morten Kromberg
Dyalog Ltd.

APL2000 2010 Users Conference in Washington DC

2010-04-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

Read about Sonia Beekman’s prize!

I’ll post the photos when I get home from Toronto next week! Stay tuned!

Report: Finnish Forest Seminar 2010

2010-04-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

Despite the volcano, Adrian Smith made it to Finland for the 2010 Finnish Forest Seminar, and posted this report.

Dyalog announces 2010 programming competition

2010-04-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

Following on from last years successful contest, the 2010 edition of the Dyalog Programming Contest was launched last week.

The contest has been established with the purpose of encouraging students, and others, to investigate APL.

Last year, we estimate that roughly 300 students downloaded an educational copy of Dyalog APL as a result of hearing about the contest. A young man named Ronald Chan won USD 2,000 plus an all-expenses paid trip from New Zealand to Princeton, New Jersey for our annual conference. 35 other participants won cash prizes, including people who did not submit programs but introduced the people who did.

You can read about the results of last year's contest at:

http://www.dyalog.com/news.htm#contest

... and watch a few minutes of the prize ceremony at:

http://video.dyalog.com/Dyalog09/2009ProgrammingContestPrizeCeremony.html

This year, the contest is sponsored by Fiserv (US), Simcorp (Denmark), APL Italiana (Italy) and Dyalog Ltd. as well as several individuals and companies who have chosen to remain anonymous. There are 26 cash prizes to be won by students with an equivalent number of introduction awards - totalling US$ 15,000 (up from 11,000 last year).

The First Prize winner can look forward to $2,500 plus round trip travel from anywhere in the world to the APL 2010 Conference in Berlin Germany on September 13-16.

As before, the people or organisations that introduce the winning students to the contest will receive the same dollar prizes - and they need not be students to make the introduction.

The deadline for submission is Noon UTC, July 18th, 2010.

For more information on the programming contest, rules and submission of entries, see http://www.dyalog.com/contest_2010, and/or join the Facebook group "Dyalog Programming Contest".

We hope that you will support the contest this year, either by participating (if you should be lucky enough to qualify) or by passing this information on to a student who might be interested!

Morten Kromberg,
CTO, Dyalog Ltd.

BAA announces 2010 Annual General Meeting

2010-04-22T01:25:00.000-07:00

The British APL Association will hold its Annual General Meeting at 3pm on Fri 21 May at The Albion, 2-3 New Bridge Street, London EC4V 6AA.

Agenda

Minutes of AGM 2009
Report from the Chairman (Paul Grosvenor)
Report from the Treasurer (Nicholas Small) (including report from membership secretary)
Committee for 2010-2011
Appointment of Auditor
Questions
Presentation of the Outstanding Achievement Award
Any other business (at least 24 hours notice, please.)

The AGM will be brief and will be followed by an ordinary meeting with invited speakers from Dyalog and MicroAPL. Tea, coffee and a light buffet will be provided

Anthony Camacho, Hon Sec

If you hope to attend, please notify treasurer@vector.org.uk.

The Albion is on the west side of New Bridge Street, just south of Ludgate Circus, the junction of New Bridge Street, Fleet Street, Farringdon Street, and Ludgate Hill. NB: Blackfriars underground station is closed until 2011.

DLS 2010 call for papers

2010-04-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

Dynamic Languages Symposium 2010

October 18, 2010

Co-located with SPLASH (OOPSLA) 2010

In cooperation with ACM SIGPLAN

John Ascuaga's Nugget, Reno/Tahoe, Nevada, USA

http://www.dynamic-languages-symposium.org/dls-10/

Call for papers

The 6th Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS) at the conference formerly known as OOPSLA is a forum for discussion of dynamic languages, their implementation and application. While mature dynamic languages including Smalltalk, Lisp, Scheme, Self, Prolog, and APL continue to grow and inspire new converts, a new generation of dynamic scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, PHP, Tcl, and JavaScript are successful in a wide range of applications. DLS provides a place for researchers and practitioners to come together and share their knowledge, experience, and ideas for future research and development. DLS 2010 invites high quality papers reporting original research, innovative contributions or experience related to dynamic languages, their implementation and application. Accepted Papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

Innovative language features and implementation techniques
Development and platform support, tools
Interesting applications
Domain-oriented programming
Very late binding, dynamic composition, and runtime adaptation
Reflection and meta-programming
Software evolution
Language symbiosis and multi-paradigm languages
Dynamic optimization
Hardware support
Experience reports and case studies
Educational approaches and perspectives
Object-oriented, aspect-oriented, and context-oriented programming

Submissions and proceedings

We invite original contributions that neither have been published previously nor are under review by other refereed events or publications. Research papers should describe work that advances the current state of the art. Experience papers should be of broad interest and should describe insights gained from substantive practical applications. The program committee will evaluate each contributed paper based on its relevance, significance, clarity, and originality.

Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library.

Papers are to be submitted electronically at http://www.easychair.org/conferences?conf=dls2010 in PDF format. Submissions must not exceed 12 pages and need to use the ACM format, templates for which can be found at http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.

Important dates

 Submission of papers: June 1, 2010 (hard deadline) Author notification: July 15, 2010 Final versions due: August 13, 2010 DLS 2010: October 18, 2010 SPLASH/OOPSLA 2010: October 17-21, 2010

Program chair

William Clinger, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Program committee

Robby Findler (Northwestern University)
Jeffrey S. Foster (University of Maryland)
Lars Thomas Hansen (Adobe Systems)
Charlotte Herzeel (University of Brussels)
S. Alexander Spoon (Google)
Eric Tanter (University of Chile)
Jan Vitek (Purdue University)
Alessandro Warth (Viewpoints Research Institute)

Ferranti's girl for Ada Lovelace Day

2010-03-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Wednesday March 24, 2010 is Ada Lovelace Day. This means almost 1700 of us around the world made a pledge to write a blog post about a woman in science or technology.

You can see them all at Finding Ada

Or if you want to read about who I picked to write about from our array language community so straight to Ferranti's Girl for Ada Lovelace Day

And I'm collecting names of female array programmers. I've made it a game, but seriously appreciate you naming names: Women!

APL is not for programmers

2010-03-20T04:52:00.001-07:00

Jan Karman thinks APL too good for programmers. Part 2 of his series Financial math in q has been posted online.

Rocket announces ICE

2010-03-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

ICE from Rocket is a follow-on from IBM Info Center/Enhanced (IC/E),
with considerable enhancements compared with IBM ICE. It is a powerful
end-user system designed to let you:

Manipulate and query user data.
Write use-defined reports.
Define graphic output.
Define user-controlled data entry.
Define user-controlled data validation.
ICE allows you to make inquiries against a range of file types in the
Query System component, including large inverted files, and to produce
reports and business graphics in the Reporting System component.
ICE is an optional feature of Rocket Application System (AS) and
provides close links with APL2. It is an upgrade path for IC/E, IC/1,
ADRS and ADI users.

ICE is an excellent solution for applications which need to perform
fast queries on large volumes of data. And with AS Client Connections,
you can deliver the power of ICE to your PC.

The Query System

The Query System is designed to perform queries against ICE Query
System files. These files include:

ICE inverted Query files.
SQL/DS or DB2 tables.
DIF files.
ICE Transfer files.
ICE Application files (Reporting System store files).
APL variables created with the AS OUT (APL) command.
The result of each query is written to disk and displayed on the
user’s terminal. The user can then do any of the following:

Print the results to a destination specified in the nickname file
Perform another query
Use the TOAS or TORS command to move the data to AS, or to the
Reporting System, for further processing.
The Reporting System

Reporting System (RS) gives access to:

Report writer.
Data entry.
Data validation.
Business graphics.
and also to the following, if they have been incorporated into ICE:

Application Prototype Environment (APE).
Financial Planning System (FPS).
RS also gives access to the main ICE menu, and this gives access to
the following additional facilities:

AS
Query System
User profile
Line mode
Starter Set
Other applications
ICE and Rocket AS

ICE has been integrated as a feature of Rocket AS. It is accessed from
the Facilities menu in AS and also by command.

You can use ICE data in Rocket AS. ICE queries can be stored in AS as
Query System Command Tables and the results of a query can be used as
the current IN table. This provides seamless access to the many
facilities of Rocket AS, including:

Graphics
Reports
Project Management
Statistics
Linear Programming
Business Planning
APL and Rocket AS

You can pass information between Rocket AS and APL2, thus linking
applications in the two environments. Several utilities are available
from the USEAPL workplace in the *SAMP library.

The ability to manipulate arrays in APL2 can be used from within AS
procedures, or AS commands can be invoked from APL2 user-defined
functions. AS procedures can use APL2 matrices as an alternative to AS
data tables.

APL BUG meeting 1 April

2010-03-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

The APL Bay Area Users' Group (The Northern California SIGAPL of the ACM) will meet on the 1st of April to hear
Paul Jackson tell about a set of classes he's developed to
provide APL functionality for the .NET programmer.

Thursday, 1 April 2010
6 p.m. - Bring takeout supper and network.
7 p.m. - Paul Jackson speaks.

at San Jose State University,
College of Engineering Room ENG 339
(E San Fernando St. & S 7th St.
San Jose, CA 95192)

http://www.sjsu.edu/about_sjsu/visiting/campus_maps/#maincampus
http://www.sjsu.edu/parking/
http://www.sjdowntownparking.com/evening_parking.html
Paul Jackson writes: The free APL I've been using is over twenty years old. In
addition to being a DOS program, it has severe limitations
on the size of variables and reading modern files would mean
mapping UTF-8 and Unicode. Years of using other development
environments has demonstrated that they have moved well
beyond what was available in the early years of APL's
success.

I've worked with VB.Net since it arrived, and I felt it had
the tools necessary to develop a compiled APL. This is not
an effort to compete with those who've learned the internals
of the .Net CLR and built a traditional interpreter.
Instead, I've produced a set of .Net classes which provide
APL functionality for the .Net programmer. It will be
provided in a way which makes writing your own functions and
operators relatively easy.

Briefly, one must declare variables as APL, but nothing more.
Dim myA As APL
myA = _Index(10)(_a.Plus, _Of(100))
myA = _Of(2, 5)(_a.Reshape, myA)
myA = _Of("ABCD")
myA = myA(_c.IndexOf, _Of("AX"))
If you step through this one line at a time, you will find
the APL value contains exactly what you would expect as an
APL programmer.

Biography:

I learned APL in 1969 while working at Trinity University in
San Antonio, Texas. I taught it there and at Dallas County
Community College District for the first twelve years of my
career. I then joined I.P. Sharp Associates, where I
developed several of their shared variable processors and
the character left argument for thorn. I eventually lead
the APL development group, before leaving in 1993.

For the last decade, I've been leading the development group
at Dialog. Dialog is a company which generalized and
formalized search engine expressions, much like APL did for
logical expressions. I retired last September, and am
enjoying the ability to work on what interests me.

LINQ to APL

2010-03-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

LINQ is the ‘hot’ new technology for Language-Integrated Queries.

Ajay Askoolum has written how to LINQ to APL+Win.

Reference animations for J

2010-03-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

Bob Therriault is in the process of developing some reference animations for J.

He writes on my blog:

We are hoping to create an easier conceptual access to some of J's array processing primitives. What we really would like is feedback from those with 'fresh eyes'. So if anyone has access to a classroom of learners discovering array processing languages, send them our way!

J Animations These are great, folks. Take a look.

Jeffrey Shallit on Ken Iverson - 2004

2010-02-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd let you know I've posted Jeffrey Shallit's unbridged talk at Ken Iverson's memorial in Toronto in 2004.

And for the pundits among you... I'll have you know that the full version of the 1974 Origins of APL video has had 3,502 plays to date. Who would have thought!

Jaffrey Shallit @ KEI Memorial

Catherine | MySpace Video

To read more about it see my blog.

APL Insights

2010-01-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

At Play With J: 2nd edn.

2009-12-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

The second edition of At Play With J, collected from Eugene McDonnell’s columns for Vector, has been published at Lulu.com.

Here in one volume are Eugene McDonnell’s 41 excellent articles published between 1993 and 2006. They form a series of straightforward but profound mathematical investigations which are not only entertaining but expand the mind.

The classical tradition founded by Fermat and Gauss mystifies the mathematical art by concealing the way in which the investigator found the solution in the first place. Trainee researchers will gain reassurance from the fact that the author does not shy away from expressing perplexity and puzzlement along the often rocky road to a solution. As such it constitutes a unique masterclass in how to do mathematical research.

The second edition has been produced by a team of J experts, revising and reworking the examples to correspond to best practice with J 6.02. With prefaces by Roger Hui and Chris Burke.

The first edition reproduced the original Vector articles with only minor amendments. But J evolved over the many years during which McDonnell wrote his column, and in the latest version of J not all the examples work as they were given. The first edition is of largely historical interest.

Kx, Kbd+ User Group Meeting NYC Dec 2009

2009-12-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

I had a wonderful time at the Kdb+ User Group Meeting last week in NYC.

Remember this guy? He was there... Simon Garland!

The stories from the trip are still coming out on the blog and the photos are posted in Flickr !

Grammar for pandas

2009-12-09T03:09:00.000-08:00

In the latest J-ottings column, just posted to Vector, Norman Thomson mixes it with pandas, shoots and leaves. See Punctuation and rank

Graduation of mortality

2009-12-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

Just posted at Vector: Jan Karman starts a series of articles on financial mathematics in q with Graduation of mortality

Combining far faster

2009-12-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

In a new article posted at Vector, R.E. Boss harvests new insights from generating combinations faster in J.

Rediscovering APL’s history

2009-12-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

A new article posted at Vector recounts Catherine Lathwell’s talk to APL BUG about her documentary film project.

APL2000 announces 2010 conference

2009-12-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

Springtime in Washington with APL2000

APL2000 User Conference - April 26-27, 2010

Plan to join the APL community as we gather in our Nation's capital to focus on the latest developments in APL2000 software. Attend informative presentations, engage in stimulating discussions, and enjoy the camaraderie of spending a few days with fellow APL enthusiasts. Special weekend hotel rates will be available to conference attendees who arrive early.
SAVE THE DATE

Mark your calendar for the APL2000 User Conference

April 26-27, 2010
The APL2000 Team looks forward to seeing you in April.

Sonia Beekman

Director of Sales & Marketing
APLNow LLC dba APL2000
One Research Court, Suite 140
Rockville, MD 20850
Phone: 301-208-7150
Fax: 301-208-7151
E-mail: sonia.beekman@apl2000.com

www.apl2000.com

APL2010 Call for papers

2009-11-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

APL2010 has called for papers.

2009 I.P. Sharp Associates Christmas party

2009-11-09T03:45:00.000-08:00

Graeme Robertson has announced the 2009 I.P. Sharp London Christmas party will be held at its usual venue, The Plumbers Arms in Victoria, from 5pm on Fri 18 December.

IBM releases Workstation APL2 Version 2 Service Level 15

2009-11-09T03:35:00.000-08:00

(Reposted from comp.lang.apl. See discussion there.)

The IBM APL Products and Services group is pleased to announce Service Level 15 for Workstation APL2 for Multiplatforms Version 2.0. This new service level is available for all Workstation APL2 platforms including AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, and Windows.

Along with fixes for customer reported problems, Service Level 15 contains the following enhancements:

All platforms:

Fill functions are implemented for each and outer product.

Identity functions are implemented for reduce.

New external function LEXP provides lexical parsing using the APL2 syntax rules.

New external function FDELETE deletes an operating system file. On Windows, the file is sent to the Recycle Bin.

Windows:

General enhancements to the Session Manager environment include preservation of color and font information as data is copied to the clipboard and a single global custom colors array for all APL2 windows.

Additions to the Object Editor's Edit menu are Paste File, Redo, Comment and Decomment.

Extensive changes have been made to allow easier debugging of APL2 applications. Highlights of these changes include a new Debug menu in the Session Manager window, a Stack window and Watch windows for variables and expressions.

Unicode characters can be assigned to keys using the APL2 Keyboard Properties dialog.

New external function IDIOMSG provides a GUI interface to the APL2 Idioms Library.

Service Level 15 is available through the Support option at the APL2 home page to customers with a Software Maintenance contract.

Further information on the new facilities will be found in the updated APL2 User's Guide and on-line help after installing the service. A complete list of fixes included in this level will be found in the updated README (Unix systems) or "Service Information" (Windows systems) file.

Dyalog releases version 12.1

2009-11-09T03:29:00.000-08:00

Dyalog has released Version 12.1

Jobs page

2009-11-06T10:33:00.000-08:00

Times may be tough but Vector is seeing more and more work for array programmers.

The site now has a Jobs page.

Send news of work to our Jobs Editor, John ‘Jake’ Jacob jobs@vector.org.uk

J and q for Lispers

2009-11-01T16:15:00.000-08:00

In a new article in Vector, Slobodan Blazeski explains why Lisp programmers study array languages

MicroAPL releases APLX 5

2009-10-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

MicroAPL announces the commercial release of APLX Version 5 for all platforms – Windows, MacOS and Linux. APLX Server Editions, and 64-bit implementations, are also now available.

You can download free-of-charge evaluation copies of APLX Version 5 from the MicroAPL website www.microapl.co.uk/apl.

This is a quick summary of the new features introduced in Version 5 (see further details):

Performance Profiling can be used to find out which parts of your APL code take the most time to execute, or are executed most often, and so helps you to determine which functions to concentrate on when optimising performance. You can view the performance data in a number of different ways, and easily 'drill down' to get more detail on exactly where execution time is spent. APLX Version 5 introduces a very easy-to-use menu-based profiling facility, or, for more detailed control, a new system function for profiling. The results are available in tables, in graphical form, and as a detailed web page report.
Function, Workspace and Text Comparison
A new Scrapbook and Idiom facility, to help you re-use code snippets and APL idioms.
‘Mixins’, an innovative extension to the object-oriented language features introduced in APLX v4. Mixins allow you to extend your user-defined classes so that, at run-time, they dynamically 'mix in' functionality (i.e. methods and properties, and perhaps events) from one or more other classes; these can be internal (user-defined, and written in APL), or external (.Net, Java, Ruby etc, or a built-in APLX system class).
New external class interface: R Statistical Software. R is an open-source language and set of packages aimed principally at statistical analysis. It includes a huge library of pre-written statistical and mathematical routines, which can be accessed immediately and very conveniently from APLX. It also includes mathematically-oriented graphing facilities, and support for complex numbers.
New Primitive Functions: Unique, Union, Intersection, Stop, Left, Pass, Right, and Not Match.
XML Conversion facilities
Support for SVG Graphics
Larger component files.

Donald McIntyre

2009-10-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

Roger Hui on the J Forum:

Donald B. McIntyre (1923-08-15 to 2009-10-21) passed away peacefully in the afternoon of October 21. Donald was an eminent geologist who pioneered the use of computers in geology. He was a gifted and inspiring teacher, an early and long-time APL and J user, and a friend and colleague of Ken Iverson and myself. He is survived by his wife Ann and his son Ewen. A memorial service will be held in St John’s Kirk in Perth, Scotland, this coming Friday, October 30.
Information about Donald’s life and times and his work can be found at www.mcintyre.me.uk

Professor McIntyre was a generous contributor to Vector. He is greatly missed.

Finnish Forest Seminar 15-16 Apr 2010

2009-10-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

FinnAPL has announced its annual Foreset Seminar w3ill be held “somewhere in Southern Finland” on 15-16 April 2010. The programme should cover the versions of Dyalog, Windows and J and some databases.

Contact Kimmo Linna for details: kimmo.linna@finnair.com

STSC manuals

2009-10-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

Leather-bound STSC APL manuals seek a good home: contact treasurer@vector.org.uk

JobWatch: UK

2009-10-21T02:59:00.000-07:00

Reposted from JobServe:

Senior Python Developer - Automated Trading/Betting - London, Permanent
Skills: Python, Unix/Linux, Erlang, C, Haskell, APL/J/K, Lisp, Django

My client is a Sports Trading and Quantitative Research Software House based in West London with clients including market leading betting syndicates and high street bookmakers alike. They are presently looking for an exceptional Python developer to join a small team of industry leading technologists using cutting edge technology and quantitative techniques to overcome the betting industry's fundamental inefficiencies (namely a lack of automation, risk, efficient pricing and poor liquidity).

They are seeking a very strong Senior Python technologist with a broad range of technical experience acquired over 5 + years within a professional environment. Applicants with a strong interest in other Scripting languages, Erlang, Haskell and Unix/Linux would be especially sought after. As would those with experience developing reliable, fault tolerant applications.

The successful applicant will be joining an elite team working on the extension and improvement of an award winning Automated Sports Betting Systems, presently tailored specifically towards the Football markets, but with planned expansion to other sports. Previous experience working on similarly automated trading systems within finance or betting would be preferable, but those from outside the industry with a keen interest in Sport will be considered. Applicants will most likely be considered the technical authority on Python within their represent employer.

My client offers a technology focused environment which is relaxed (no suits, good work/life balance) yet technically excellent. They have already attracted some of the industries top talent by offering the best of both worlds, exposure to a broad range of automated trading and sports betting products in a high output environment with creative software house feel.

If interested, please email your CV to (see below).

Aston Carter Ltd is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.
Location West London
Country UK
Start Date ASAP
Rate £50k-£75k per annum + excellent benefits and bonuses
Employment Agency Aston Carter
Contact Oliver Doherty
Telephone 0207 997 1145
Fax 020 7997 1001
Email Oliver.Doherty.DD979.232A0@mail.jobserve.com
Web Link http://www.astoncarter.co.uk
Reference JSBR=TRADEPYTHON451
Posted Date 20/10/2009 18:15:26

APL The Next Generation

2009-10-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

Stardate 2009. Ajay Askoolum finds Visual APL ready for the Visual Studio universe of polyglot solutions. Boldly go.

Exploring the beauty of J

2009-10-21T01:20:00.001-07:00

Luis Diego Fallas has been exploring J on his blog Exploring Beautiful Languages.

R… statistics!

2009-10-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Simon Marsden reaches for the rich, open-source resources of the R language – not a big stretch with his APLX-R interface

Full moons and Sundays

2009-10-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

Calculating when Easter falls ought to be tricky. Ray Polivka finds an old solution that needs just ten divisions.

Cocking & Darwin

2009-10-19T00:57:00.000-07:00

Get evolution working for you. Romilly Cocking shows you how to grow your own programs using genetic algorithms.

JobWatch: UK

2009-10-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Python Senior Software Developer Hedge Fund/Finance London

Python Senior Software Developer/Python Programmer is required for exciting and progressive Hedge Fund Financial company based in London. They are looking for an enthusiastic and experienced in Python and Unix/Linux Software Developer/Python Programmer. An interest in functional programming and its application in the real world would be useful. The role would suit developers with at least five years experience and proven ability to deliver working software. You might also have some of the following skills in C, Haskell, APL/J/K, Lisp, Django and significant part of childhood spent hacking away in 8-bit assembly language. Join an exciting company with many opportunities to progress your Python career. Send your CV for immediately review and further details.
Location London
Country UK
Rate £45k to £80k Per: annum + Benefits: Excellent Benefits
Employment Agency Oho Group Ltd
Contact Burim Hykaj
Telephone 0207 622 5155
Email Burim.Hykaj.1C2CB.3892E@mail.jobserve.com
Reference JS055
Posted Date 15/10/2009 18:30:48

Reposted from JobServe

Below the SALT

2009-10-13T03:28:00.000-07:00

Dyalog’s SALT lets you define functions, variables, namespaces and classes from scripts – but how to turn the workspaces you have into scripts? Dan Baronet shows it’s a snap

Beyond average

2009-10-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

The Dfn version of the classic APL expression for the average or arithmetic mean is widely thought to be unimprovable. Roger Hui shows it’s not.

The problem with the world

2009-10-11T02:44:00.000-07:00

Writing DotNet assemblies means handling multiple metrics. Get yourself ready with our GPS reader challenge.

Games of life and death

2009-10-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

Military applications of APL? A weird wired patch from Solarbreeze’s Flickr collection.

Kudos to Devon McCormick for calling it in.

Correspondence: Mark Wickens

2009-10-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

We don’t really have the comment thing going yet at Vector. So here’s a traditional letter to the editor from Mark Wickens

Just wanted to say thanks for the Dyalog at 25 issue of Vector. I went to blood donors last night and needed something to occupy me during the inevitable wait (an hour this time) and located this copy of Vector propped on top of a pile of books under the bed, couldn't decide whether I'd read it or not and just took it along. Absolutely fascinating, and a powerful insight into the trials and tribulations of a small software company, especially from the 'geek' perspective.
For my sins I have an interest in old DEC hardware (alpha, vax etc) so was especially interested in the bits about the 64 bit version and the slow VAX implementation. My first job was on the VAX porting team of a small software house – so a lot of the details rang true.
For a reason unknown only to myself I had an interest in getting VAX APL installed (which it is on a VAXstation 4000/90) and at some point in the future will get the time to hopefully provide a little information to anyone interested on the web. Are there any versions of Dyalog APL still kicking around for the VAX or Alpha? I'd love to have a go at getting it up and running.
Thanks for the article and all your hard work on Vector. The dedication of the team shows through in the quality of the publication.
Right back to the day job, Enterprise Java…
Regards,

Mark.
www.wickensonline.co.uk

50 in 50: Fifty programming languages in fifty minutes

2009-10-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

Art or education? Or “pretentious drivel”? Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel presented fifty 50-word remarks on fifty programming languages at JAOO Århus 2008. Yes, APL too.

Kudos to Dave Thomas for the link.

JobWatch UK

2009-10-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Senior and graduate Python developers wanted with APL, J or K experience preferred:

Graduate Python Developers are required to work for a new emerging leader in the information security industry based in South West London.

You will be a part of a company that is growing rapidly in size and in reputation. As one of their Graduate Python developers you will be in a key position to be a part of something big and exciting, giving you endless opportunities to progress rapidly from a Graduate Python Developer to a Senior Python Developer position. You will receive an excellent starting salary, long holidays and discretional bonuses. You will ideally have had good academic experience working with Python and you will have a strong interest in Linux/Unix. You will have at least a 2:1 or above from a redbrick University and you will ideally have A's and B's at A-level.
A background in any of C, Haskell, APL/J/K, Lisp, Django would be beneficial but they are not essential.

Also…

Graduate Python Developers are required to work for a new emerging leader in the information security industry based in South West London. You will be a part of a company that is growing rapidly in size and in reputation. As one of their Graduate Python developers you will be in a key position to be a part of something big and exciting, giving you endless opportunities to progress rapidly from a Graduate Python Developer to a Senior Python Developer position. You will receive an excellent...

Contact Dan Seddon at Oho Group on +44 20 7622 6399.

Kx announces kdb+ 2.6 with nanosecond timestamps

2009-09-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Kx Systems has released version 2.6 of kdb+ with nanosecond timestamps as a datatype. Says Simon Garland:

Although a nanosecond timestamp goes beyond the needs of most people at the moment, we have decided to do this now, to give our clients a significant amount of flexibility. This is similar to our leading the market to 64-bits years ago, at a time when this was not seen as essential – now it has become the market standard.

Full press release…

JobWatch

2009-09-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Brian Becker is looking for help developing Software as a Service using Dyalog and ASP.NET.

Details…

Dyalog's 2009 Photos posted on Flickr

2009-09-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

Here you are folks... My photos from this week's Dyalog APL 2009 conference in Princeton NJ, USA on Flickr.

Don't forget to watch my film blog: www.aprogramminglanguage.com

JobWatch: UK

2009-09-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

A top tier Investment Bank is looking for a kdb+/q Architect to spearhead the architecture and development of a Greenfield Tick Data Capture system.
Working closely with IT heads, Traders and Analysts you will have excellent communication skills and strong understanding of cross asset class business including FX, Rates and Commodities.

You will have proven experience in designing and implementing quality controls within high-pressure investment banking environments with substantial exposure/ hands on experience of developing kdb+/q time series, relational database systems along with good Unix, perl and shell scripting Matlab and Oracle skills using Agile/Scrum development methodologies.

Based in London this is a permanent position

Please mail me on philip.greenwood@palmmason.com if you are interested.

JobWatch: Belgium

2009-08-20T22:58:00.000-07:00

Reposted from JobServe…

APL (A Programming Language) Developer, Belgium, French/Dutch Speaking.

My Client, a Blue Chip Organization is looking for APL consultants, with at least 5 years of experience in IT industry, with extensive experience in APL (A Programming Language). You should have extensive experience within the financial sector with hands on experience in Investment management, Asset management and Pension Fund. Risk Management and Investigating issues and fixing issues will be an added advantage. French/Dutch speaking skills is mandatory.

Apply immediately for a telephone interview.

R2 International Ltd is acting in its capacity as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Country: Belgium
Start Date: ASAP
Duration: 6 months
Rate: Excellent
Employment Business: R2 International Ltd
Contact: Raja Ilaya
Telephone: +44 (0) 207 100 2312
Fax: +44 (0) 870 490 6845
Email: Raja.Ilaya.3AFF0.8C17D@mail.jobserve.com
Reference: JS/RI/APL_DEVELOPER_BRUSSELS_20809
Posted Date: 20/08/2009 14:32:34

BAPLA09

2009-08-15T02:16:00.001-07:00

Photos from the BAPLA09 conference in Reading have been posted. Also the presentations.

Speakers Corner at Princeton

2009-08-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

We'll be setting up a Speakers Corner to collect our stories at Dyalog's APL Conference in Princeton, NJ USA September 13-16 2009. We're hoping to capture anecdotes about how APL is being used today. Have you had a really cool APL experience lately? We want to hear about it. Do you have a new idea you'd like to promote? Here's your chance to see it published on YouTube!

We are also interested in the human side. Have you had an interesting collaborative experience with fellow APLers you'd like to share? Romance?

We'll be taking the top stories to the finish line and posting them on YouTube. So, YouTube is the target for these stories. Keep it short. Keep it simple & rock on!

As a bonus you'll get to meet Iris Ng, my colleague and collaborator for APL: The Movie (more girls with gear!).

http://www.dyalog.com/dyalog_09.html

Tom turns round

2009-08-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

In a short article in the July/August issue of IEEE Software, Tom DeMarco, one of the founding figures from the 1980s of the software engineering movement, recants.

DeMarco became a major influence on SE with his 1982 book Controlling Software Projects: Management, measurement and estimation.

In my reflective mood I’m wondering, was its advice correct at the time, is it still relevant, and do I believe that metrics are a must for any successful software development effort? My answers are no, no, and no.

What does he now think?

Software development is and always will be somewhat experimental.

So now even he knows. Direct Development – is its hour come at last?

Dyalog at 25

2009-08-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

Mark Wickens writes:

Just wanted to say thanks for the Dyalog at 25 issue of Vector. I went to blood donors last night and needed something to occupy me during the inevitable wait (an hour this time) and located this copy of Vector propped on top of a pile of books under the bed, couldn't decide whether I'd read it or not and just took it along. Absolutely fascinating, and a powerful insight into the trials and tribulations of a small software company, especially from the 'geek' perspective.

For my sins I have an interest in old DEC hardware (alpha, vax etc) so was especially interested in the bits about the 64 bit version and the slow VAX implementation. My first job was on the VAX porting team of a small software house - so a lot of the details rang true.

For a reason unknown only to myself I had an interest in getting VAX APL installed (which it is on a VAXstation 4000/90) and at some point in the future will get the time to hopefully provide a little information to anyone interested on the web. Are there any versions of Dyalog APL still kicking around for the VAX or Alpha? I'd love to have a go at getting it up and running.

Thanks for the article and all your hard work on Vector. The dedication of the team shows through in the quality of the publication.

Right back to the day job, Enterprise Java...

Regards,

Mark.
http://www.wickensonline.co.uk

2009 Worldwide Programming Contest winners announced

2009-08-02T01:46:00.000-07:00

Dyalog has announced the winners of the 2009 Worldwide Programming Contest.

First prize went to Ronald Chan. The judges commented:

Ronald’s submission showed impressive insight and analysis of the problems and the underlying mathematics, good use of classes. His submission ran considerably faster than any other entry. Ronald documented his solutions very well and many of his solutions were of a form to solve more general problems than the specific Project Euler problem presented. His efforts included error checking to capture invalid inputs.

Second place went to Chris King:

What set Chris’ entry apart was the brevity and compactness of his solutions. He made extensive use of operators, reduction, composition, power and limit. A good example of APL as a tool of thought.

Third place was taken by Maks Verver:

Maks had a commendable entry with good documentation, good use of APL, and good insight into the problems presented.

Vector congratulates the winners and looks forward to seeing Ronald in Princeton next month.

APL article on Wikipedia

2009-07-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

At yesterday's meeting, BAA London drafted a new opening for the Wikipedia article on APL, and posted it on the APL Wiki for further work (especially collecting citations) before it goes on Wikipedia.

Take a look at the draft and see what you can contribute.

The Origins of APL - 1974

2009-07-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

This is the Full 1 hour version: The Origins of APL - 1974

Job Watch: Canada

2009-07-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.workopolis.com/EN/theme/Metroland/job/10802094

Senior Developer Time Series,
CPP INVESTMENT BOARD
Posted May 19, 2009

Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
Industry:
Company Url:
Financial
http://www.cppib.ca

Department: Information Services
Reference No.: Q110-136R
Position Type: Full-time
Location: Toronto,Ontario
Job Category:

With assets under management projected to grow to $250 billion by 2016, CPP Investment Board is one of the largest and fastest growing institutional investors in the world. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in London and Hong Kong, the CPP Investment Board is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan by experienced and highly skilled investment professionals. Their job is to prudently invest CPP assets to help pay future pensions.

The Time Series Solutions team is looking for a forward thinking Senior Developer to help lay the foundation of a KDB-based enterprise-level time series data platform. The Time Series Solutions team is responsible for delivering time series data and related solutions and services to our business partners as well as to other groups in Information Services.

Candidates will have an Undergraduate or Graduate degree in the field of physical sciences, computer sciences, software engineering, Mathematics and/or equivalent and 7+ years of work experience within financial services, preferably investment management.

The role requires familiarity with data management systems, strong communication skills and a desire to work in a fast-paced agile-delivery environment.

Role Specific Accountabilities:

* Further the design and development of the early-stage KDB-based time series warehouse
* Collaborate with business and IS team members to conceptualize, design and develop Kdb+, Java or C++ software solutions which may include integration with database applications, web services and ESB services that support CPPIB's service oriented architectur
* Adhere to, advocate and follow development best practices
* Analyze and prepare wiki-based SDLC artifacts including system documentation and test plans and develop software in accordance with CPPIB SDLC standards
* Effectively unit test and perform integration testing on software components. Proactively assist quality assurance
* Create installation plans, validation plans and back out procedures to assist Infrastructure Management with software deployments
* Assist in the development and maintenance of a wiki shared knowledge base
* Conduct research on emerging application development software products, languages, and standards
* Provide level II troubleshooting support on a rotational, 7x24 basis

If you possess the following, we'd like to hear from you

* 7+ years of programming experience in Java, J2EE or C++ with emphasis on server-side development of enterprise-class applications and databases
* Senior development experience with enterprise market and reference data management systems
* Coding experience with time series systems or platform
* Exposure to the use of frameworks and open architecture designs
* Senior experience with the full software life cycle in larger collaborative development teams, with practice ranging from requirements analysis through deployment
* Strong communication and interpersonal skills
* Strong problem solving skills stemming from math, physics and/or a computer science background
* Strong initiative with an ability to grasp the big picture and actively seek ways to improve the status quo
* Strong commitment to guiding principles of integrity, partnership and high performance

Desirable Experience

* Experience programming in Q or K (Kdb+), APL, Sybase IQ, Vhayu, Fame, or Vertica
* Experience In-memory database programming language
* Financial qualifications such as CSC and/or CFA

Origins of APL: Excerpts

2009-07-07T04:03:00.001-07:00

Ken Iversion and Adin Falkoff talk about APL in the beginning.

Origins of APL Intro

2009-07-06T18:56:00.001-07:00

Here is the Intro sequence to the 1974 film Origins of APL

Dad & My APL Box

2009-07-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is a refined version of the short film I showed at BAPLA2009. If you're a car enthusiast, it's worth another watch just to see the 1956 Caddy Adin Falkoff sold to Dick Lathwell in 1966 for $50!

Steve Pinker on Language & Thought

2009-07-03T04:16:00.000-07:00

In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds -- and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.

Functional programming in J

2009-06-19T02:42:00.000-07:00

In the third instalment of his series, Neville Holmes introduces us to the structural ingredients

How language shapes thought

2009-06-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

Professor Lera Boroditsky at Stanford has dragged the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis back into the laboratory. Her work discovers the ways in which thought depends on the languages we use. Iverson, rest easy; programmers, take note.

Article: "How does our language shape the way we think?"

APLX 5ß out now

2009-06-18T03:58:00.000-07:00

MicroAPL has released APLX 5 for public ß-testing, with the new XML interface and inbuilt performance profiling.

Dyalog 12.1ß out now

2009-06-18T03:56:00.000-07:00

Dyalog 12.1, with the new XL interface, is now out for ß-testing.

Stuck On You: APL, K & J - BAPLA2009

2009-06-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here back home in Toronto and it's raining and cold outside, just like last week in the UK. :) And I'm thinking about how well things just work out sometimes.

Never mind that APL still sports a strong community of eccentric, smart, thoughtful people and I was lucky to spend a couple of days surrounded by the clan. That's cool. Really cool. It feels like falling in love again with a long lost friend. Great. But forget about all of that.

The conference set the context for my project, my film, the movie, our movie - firmly in the now.

Because the conference was successful in its goal, to demonstrate array languages in the real world, I am now set to go. I have a decent overview of how the community has adapted our APL family of languages to radical changes in the computing world. Neat.

The programmer in me can appreciate the power of opening doors via XML & R interfaces. This tempts the Interactive Artist in me to say, give me the numbers, I'll make them dance in in Flash with ActionScript. But that's for later, for now I focus on the task at hand - the film.

In "APL in the New Millennium" Ken Iverson wrote that the differences in the APL community should be put aside. He wrote, we should be emphasizing the strengths and similarities between the different version of APL in order to present a unified face to the outside world. I think this is true. That we do have to do this. We are accumulating critical mass as slowly technology changes in our favour. Clearly, we all benefit from this critical mass and its associated momentum.

And just as clearly, computational power and data storage are no longer the expensive part of software development, labour is now a weighty expense. So, faster development is cheaper development. Go team, go! If I didn't love making this film so much, I'd be jumping right back in there with you. What a fun time! (And silly me!)

And the tension point, of course, is that clearly not all the APLs and APL derivative languages will survive forever. How do we compete in a competative market and co-operate at the same time?

Legally, of course, I mean.

Happy me - I get to watch from the sidelines.

But for now, I think the time for APL, J & K to really shine is here and that perhaps these old founding folks were smarter than they thought.

And they thought themselves mighty smart.

Life, the Universe and everything else at BAPLA09

2009-06-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

It seems like a long time ago but the BAPLA09 conference is now well and truly behind us, the APLers have gone home and it just remains for us to report back to those who couldn't attend what we did and what happens next.

We saw some new members enter the APL community and from Europe, USA and UK some 49 people rallied to the call and hoisted the banner high. The conference was brisk and covered a lot of ground in just two days - 20 presentations, 1 AGM, 1 guest speaker and a band; I hope we didn't cram too much in. Nevertheless the assembled crowd still managed to find time to solve all of the worlds' problems either in the coffee lounge or, more than likely, the bar.

For those of you who could not attend the conference we plan to publish the presentations shortly as we managed to record the sound together with a screen capture for most of them. Details will follow soon.

The food was great, the company even better and the environment in the hotel very comfortable. Tea and coffee flowed throughout the day and some members of the party were even seen jogging around the grounds on occasion. I would have joined them but was just too busy (yeah right).

We had 20 or so presentations with most running between 30 and 45 minutes so the pace was brisk having time for only 10 minutes or so between talks. During our initial scheduling we had only planned for 7 presentations per day thereby giving much more time between for 'APLchat'. The demand from speakers took us rather by surprise so it was increased to 10 per day but even then we could not accommodate everyone!

Day 1 tried to be technically biased with Day 2 more application development - not sure if we quite managed to achieve that but if you close one eye and squint ... We covered topics from nursery school education through to universal string theory, and where application development is heading through to 138 Billion record databases (give or take a couple). Then just to be different our last formal speaker, Catherine Lathwell, showed us one film she had made and discussed another that she was planning - on APL. I hope that everyone found something to interest them.

It was a slight shame that the UK companies we had hoped would attend essentially didn't. This was not because they were not interested (which I guess is a good thing) but because of the current financial situation and budgets being so tight. The messages coming back was the same from all so maybe next time!

As has become the norm in APL conferences we had a banquet with music and a speaker at the end of Day 1. Our band 'The Casablanca Steps' were very entertaining and went down well. have a look on youtube - its much easier for you to take a look than for me to try and describe. Our speaker for the night was Johnny Ball who is a well known TV personality here in the UK. He gave us a passionate and entertaining after dinner speech on topics covering education, mathematics and the environment - and that certainly led to some discussion afterward!

Overall we had an excellent two days and I certainly felt it was worth the effort of organising it. So what happens in 2010? Well I for one have not yet recovered from 2009 but if we can generate the interest, come up with some new ideas, and get some evening seminars going who knows ... Let me know what you think and what you want.

Paul Grosvenor

(Chairman BAA)

“Program in APL” article in PC Plus magazine

2009-06-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

The July issue of PC Plus magazine includes a 3-page article “Program in APL”, featuring the NARS2000 interpreter.

Countdown to the Worldwide Programming Contest

2009-06-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

Now less thab three weeks before Dyalog’s Worldwide Programming Contest closes. Student entries will win $5,500 in prizes; others can earn as much introducing them to APL. And the winner gets travel to Dyalog09 from anywhere in the world.

We’ve started a countdown on the Vector front page.

Catherine Lathwell Rediscovers the History of APL

2009-06-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

Most of you have probably figured out that my name is Catherine Lathwell and I have begun working on a documentary film about the History of APL.

Last month, on May 11, 2009, I spoke publicly for the first time about this film with the APL Bay Area Users' Group meeting at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. I live in Toronto and had booked a trip to Palo Alto to touch base with some of the old timer APL folks as an informal kick-off trip for the film. Curtis Jones found out about these plans because I plastered them all over cyberspace and organised the meeting as well as a personal tour of the museum by Dr. Leonard Shustek, Chairman of the Board for the Museum.

The Museum is awesome. At the time, a fully functioning Babbage Engine had taken up residence is the foyer. It's beautiful. Later, I got goose bumps in the lab where they are re-conditioning old machines. The lab feels like one those old machine rooms, only smaller. They had card readers (oh, my) and those old machine room printers - I can't even remember what they are called. I do however, clearly remember Charlotte Dawson giving me what-for about not tying my hair back when I was setting them up. Charlotte was my (s)hero and boss :) so, the hair went up.

Back at the Museum they are in the midst of a massive fund raising campaign to support an ambitious exhibit featuring a time line of computer history. And incidentally, as far as I can tell, we haven't made it onto the time line in software languages category on the museum's web site, so there is an opportunity for advocacy here. In any case, a problem they will have with their exhibition, and a problem I will also share is, how do you explain something abstract, like a computer language to a general audience?

The meeting with the APL Bay Area Users' Group went much as one might expect. I introduced myself and talked about my ideas for the film. I then showed a short video interview with my father, and this stimulated discussion about the good old days. Discussion was lively and folks have a lot to say. The group supports the film idea and everyone is eager to help out. This is great.

I'm now getting ready to fly to the UK tonight so that I can talk about the film at the BAPLA2009 conference. This is very exciting and fun. I have a lot of energy for this project because I truly believe it is important - and if not now, When? And if not me, Who?

I'm looking forward to seeing you all on Monday. Keep watching this space...

http://www.computerhistory.org/
http://www.aprogramminglanguage.com/

BAA London meeting 26 June

2009-06-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Next meeting will be at:

The Knights Templar
95 Chancery Lane
Holborn
London
WC2A 1DT
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=WC2A%201DT

On 26 June. 2pm downstairs for 2.30pm up.

We have a room booked from 14.30 'til 17.00 away from all the noise
and bustle and overlooking Carey Street