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System Building with APL + Win


If the APL community debated this topic, it would certainly be making the case for APL as a development tool. The decisive question is: Use APL exclusively or in conjunction with other tools? Whatever the merits, this would be a misplaced debate: the objective is to vindicate APL as a contemporary development tool, with or without other tools. The graphical user interface and a grid object are not native APL features and yet are used routinely with APL. This yields two substantive dividends: it reduces the span of the development cycle and presents a familiar and acceptable interface to users. The integration of other resources with APL solutions, such as automation servers and databases, increases these benefits dramatically. I am convinced that APL has a natural role in contemporary software development as the agent that binds available solutions and trends. APL vendors have strived to make APL a contemporary team player: this has been possible because K. E. Iverson's APL is a robust tool of thought, as a concept that transcends computer architecture rather than a computer language. The future depends on the momentum of APL deployment in system building in collaboration with other tools and not as an all-purpose purist solution looking for problems to solve.
Fortunately, I do not have to answer the question 'Why another book on APL?' for there has been a distinct lack of printed material on APL. Like any books that are a collation of knowledge, in- evitably with inherent limitations, for the benefit of contemporaries and especially welcome for the next generation this book is my attempt to fulfil this objective with an APL perspective. For me, writing this book has been a journey of self-discovery. Among the APL communities, there is a tendency to look at software development with an unshakable conviction that APL is the only tool of choice. Today, I think this is tunnel vision, albeit APL was without any doubt the tool of choice at the beginning of its history; APL is just one tool among a rich set of tools.
Ajay Askoolum - Personal Name
978-0-470-03020-2
NONE
System Building with APL + Win
Computer Science
English
2006
1-514
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