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A comment on FizzBuzz in J, Explained. Parent comment

Re:FizzBuzz in J, Explained by chx on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:10PM (#13440671)
There are a billion things against a sigil only language: it's near impossible to give you a helpful IDE (in a word-like language you can use autocomplete but how do you give ideas whether the user should use @ or ^ at a given point?), it's near impossible to search for code examples and such (the other day I was looking for code in any language at all that uses /PZ/u as a regular expression without success), you need to think twice before using any of the standard shell utilities on them and so on.
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Re:FizzBuzz in J, Explained by avmich on Friday January 20, 2017 @12:05AM (#13441838)
> it's near impossible to give you a helpful IDE (in a word-like language you can use autocomplete

What autocomplete you need in J? For verbs and conjunctions which are at most 2 letters long?

> how do you give ideas whether the user should use @ or ^ at a given point?

In the same way as IDE helps you to choose . or exp() ? They are completely different concepts, how can you mix them?

> it's near impossible to search for code examples and such

I think it's a common problem for complex code examples, in any language. You may, though, search for comments.

From http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/foreword.htm#_Toc1917342... :

> C is a computer language; it lets you control the things the computer does. J is a language of computation: it lets you describe what needs to be done without getting bogged down in details

I think it's a great help. J doesn't just reduces typing; it also reduces the amount of things one needs to keep in the head to solve the problem.

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Re:FizzBuzz in J, Explained by lokedhs on Saturday January 21, 2017 @10:31AM (#13450450)
When I implemented the GNU APL mode for Emacs, I tried to make it as much as an IDE as possible. I modelled it on SLIME, and it has a live connection to your runtime, and provides things like jump-to-definition and completion based on the functions available in the runtime.

I even coerced SES (the Emacs spreadsheet) to act as an editor for large arrays.

I would argue that I have suceeded at least partially, such that I can say that it's definitely possible to implement an IDE for APL.

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