How the mathematicians won the war

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

The Year 1998

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

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.

Eugene McDonnell 1926-2010

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

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

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

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