Topic

Dr. Peter Anderson, Professor Emeritus RIT, will give a presentation on J.

J is Ken Iverson's APL in disguise. Unlike APL, programs are written in ASCII; like APL it is a superb "array processing language" -- Iverson called it an executable mathematical notation.

J is a functional language: functions are first class object, easy to define and manipulate. It is interactive, like Python, Perl, etc.

J reminds me a lot of the Unix shells with lots of well thought out elementary components and the glue to stick them together (i.e., pipes, redirection, etc.). J supplies the primitives for dealing with arrays (lists, table, report) and the glue, several types of function composition, to make a superbly useful system.

See http://jsoftware.com/ for a copy of the software as well as lots of free books and articles.

Details:

• address:
  

• 70-1400 RIT Campus

• date: November 19, 2009

• time: 7pm until 9pm

• room: 70-1400