APL's greatest contribution is its semantics, not its syntax.
(Some parts of the syntax are brilliant and would be awesome if adopted by modern languages. Others ..... not so much).
Re:Try APL
by throwaway17_17 on Thursday June 10, 2021 @11:48AM
(#27462072)
Which pieces of APL would you see fitting in a modern language? Simply curious about preferences of people who already enjoy the semantics and would find the APL syntax ideal.
(not parent) personally I would like to see [trains](https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Tacit_programming#Trains) in more languages, though the way they are implemented in APL is pretty spotty (e.g. the length of a train changes its semantics)
I think adopting the “each” syntax would help every language that has containers - including Python and C#
It is semantically more like “map” than “foreach”, but syntactically emphasized the applied function rather than the fact that it is applied to the container - and that shows especially when nested - f””x or f”[2]x means “apply at depth two”. Compare that to a nested map/foreach
There are other syntax features I like, but most of them do interact with semantics (some more, some less). This one is useful in any language.
IMO Its pithy syntax was just not worth it, even back then, so haven't returned since and don't see any reason to break my 40 year hiatus.