> Some people decide to learn it anyway, and quickly (within under a day) realise it is actually simple, readable, and easy to use!
Do you think all people who decide to learn it anyway end up with the same conclusions?
> That is why "they’re hard to use and hard to read" is 'controversial', because it is just not true.
So things like symbols having different meanings depending on number of arguments, prefix notation making the arguments of functions/operators stand out less, making it reading right-to-left (which is different from what you usually read - that brings the fun question of whether APL is left-to-right in Arabic countries), or having to know extra symbols that aren't used in other contexts... All of those things are not real?
I come back to the LaTeX example because to me that's very similar. I get when you say "I don't find APL hard to read/understand/work with" because I feel the same with LaTeX (even though it's not as obscure and "alien-looking" as APL is). I write slides in LaTeX faster and better than what I could do with Powerpoint. But that doesn't deny that there are a lot of things in LaTeX that make things harder, even when those are part of the core and when removing them would mean removing good things about the language too.
I think all people who try to learn APL for more than about 5 minutes end up realising most of their assumptions were completely wrong. Maybe they don't reach exactly the same conclusions (a lot of people do), but they reach similar ones.
> So things like <APL things> are not real?
They are real, but they are not issues for anyone who has tried APL at all.
Advent of code is starting soon, I'd recommend that you pick an array language and give the first couple of problems a go in it - even if you don't like it, at least it would save you from making yet more uninformed comments next time an array language article is on HN (and save array language programmers worldwide the pain of reading them).
Do you think all people who decide to learn it anyway end up with the same conclusions?
> That is why "they’re hard to use and hard to read" is 'controversial', because it is just not true.
So things like symbols having different meanings depending on number of arguments, prefix notation making the arguments of functions/operators stand out less, making it reading right-to-left (which is different from what you usually read - that brings the fun question of whether APL is left-to-right in Arabic countries), or having to know extra symbols that aren't used in other contexts... All of those things are not real?
I come back to the LaTeX example because to me that's very similar. I get when you say "I don't find APL hard to read/understand/work with" because I feel the same with LaTeX (even though it's not as obscure and "alien-looking" as APL is). I write slides in LaTeX faster and better than what I could do with Powerpoint. But that doesn't deny that there are a lot of things in LaTeX that make things harder, even when those are part of the core and when removing them would mean removing good things about the language too.