Winners of Dyalog 2010 programming contest

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.

Dyalog in Toronto 29 July

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

News from Dyalog

Dyalog has posted its summer newsletter.

Rosetta Challenge tasks added to the 2010 Dyalog Programming Contest

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

Mastering Dyalog APL

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.

Dyalog announces 2010 conference

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.

Dyalog announces 2010 programming competition

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

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.

Dyalog releases version 12.1

Dyalog has released Version 12.1

Finnish Forest Seminar 15-16 Apr 2010

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

Cocking & Darwin

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

Below the SALT

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

Correspondence: Mark Wickens

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

JobWatch

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

Details…

Dyalog's 2009 Photos posted on Flickr

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

Speakers Corner at Princeton

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

Dyalog at 25

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

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.

Dyalog 12.1ß out now

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

Countdown to the Worldwide Programming Contest

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.