Ken Iverson won the Touring Award in 1979 for inventing APL, he later developed another matrix manipulation language called ''J''From his son Eric Iverson . . .> Ken Iverson passed away Tuesday evening, October 19th at the age of> 83. Ken was at his computer Saturday afternoon working on a new J lab> when he had a stroke. Three days later he died quietly with his wife> Jean by his side, along with other family members. Ken had a wonderful> and memorable life. He enjoyed it fully and he freely shared his joy> with so many others.83 and having all his faculties, doing what he loved . . . not a bad way to go

Great language APLI wrote a complete matrix solver once in 1 line of code. Now it's takes forever in C++

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnGreat language APLI wrote a complete matrix solver once in 1 line of code. Now it's takes forever in C++APL - my favorite language. I once wrote a 100 line multivariate yield curve simulator (a more seasoned APLer could have probably written it in 25 lines). The equivalent C++ code was about 1500 lines - what a wasteMy condolences to the Iverson family.

APL and all its 'derivatives' will live on. whenever i program in APL or J, i feel a sense of being liberated. i can experiment with APL/J more easily than i can with for example C++ or Java or VB.i have quite a large 'library' of apl and J code to price various derivatives -- learnt a lot about the domain while doing this.long live ken...enjoyken

I'm no programming expert, and you're no Ken Iverson.Still, I know C compiles down pretty clean. And just about every programming book uses the line "don't reinvent the wheel" at some point.So can't you guys build some reusable structures with which you will be liberated to "experiment" in C++?You could even sell a book to explain the downloads to people.

C++ is what you use AFTER you've done experimenting / modeling / prototyping in a scripting or interpreted environment e.g. Matlab or Mathematica or APL or whatever. There are C++ interpreters out there that let you work in a tighter iterative fashion, e.g. Ch but they aren't as useful(*) as you might think in practice. I tend to develop models in Matlab and then use Matlab's COM Builder to create a reusable COM object that I can call in C++, Visual Basic, Excel, etc.A lot of folks seem to think Python bridges the gap between a language you can experiment in and a language for large-scale systems development... (*) useful for development, that is -- Ch is just fine for scripting purposes.