Vector, the Journal of the British APL Association

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2021-06-12 14:30:08

This document was created for a conference of 22 June 2006, organized by AFAPL, Association Francophone pour la promotion du langage APL : a special conference dedicated to our friend Henri Sinturel, now no longer with us.

This conference was not designed for those proficient in the language: their needs have been met for many years and I have nothing to teach them. I am only attempting to demonstrate this attractive intellectual tool to those who do not know it, in the hope of making one or two converts willing to promote it.

But to describe the APL language, whether in 3 or 30 pages is as difficult as describing a tennis match or the flight of a seagull: a written document is not capable of matching hands-on experience. Thus the following pages only give a very limited and fragmentary view of the whole wealth of APL.

I hope to stay true to the spirit of APL, and to the enthusiasm of those who have praised and promoted it over the years. I shall try also to reply to the most frequently asked questions and the most often expressed criticisms, but I cannot encompass all aspects of the debate. So I invite all those who are curious about the language to spend an hour with me at a computer screen.