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Look up just about any (non-trivial) mathematical proof, and it is "obfuscated" in the same manner: A lot of strange symbols that - to most non-mathematicians - make no sense whatsoever.
APL wasn't developed as a programming language, but as a notation for blackboard teaching of advanced math topics. The math students had to learn the meaning of a few extra symbols, in addition to the plethora of symbols they already knew.
Most APL critics would consider the language to be less obfuscated if you simply replaced the special APL characters with word symbols (such as 'reshape', 'execute', 'invert', ...). Yet, when reading math, they can easily handle sigma, integration sign, delta, root sign, pi, e and i symbols, without complaining about 'obfuscation'.
If you learn the symbols of APL, the language still has elements that differ from the 'Algol type' languages. (Today, few people ever saw an Algol program, so let us call it 'C type'  ). E.g. no operator priorities. Functions and values exist in a 'workspace', with no defined 'ordering' as a source file. Many (most) operators work on an entire matrix of arbitrary dimension, rather than iterating over the elements. These are examples of different approaches to programming, but they can hardly be called 'obfuscation'. If you say that they are, then any significant deviation from 'c style' could be called 'obfuscation'.
Lots of people have no need for learning calculus, so they don't need to know integration and sigma and delta and root symbols. We should accept that. We should also accept that many (probably the great majority of) programmers have no need to learn the symbolism for expressing matrix operations in a programming language made for that kind of problems. We should accept that as well.
If a non-mathematician looks at a differential equation and calls it 'obfuscated', mathematicians would probably just reply with a forgiving smile. If a non-APLer looks at an APL program and calls it 'obfuscated', the APL programmer would reply similarly.
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trønderen wrote: Yet, when reading math, they can easily handle sigma, integration sign, delta, root sign, pi, e and i symbols, without complaining about 'obfuscation'.
You're speaking European school system.
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I must disagree.
APL lends itself to writing one-line programs that perform highly complex operations. This is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness, because maintenance of such code is next to impossible.
It is, of course, equally possible to write obfuscated C code (see the Obfuscated C Contest), but one has to work harder at it.
The comparison to a mathematical proof is inappropriate. Mathematical proofs may be highly complex, but they rarely require maintenance as in "oh, can you just add this one feature?"
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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You missed the base point of APL - it was developed to assist with mathematical proofs. The language closely follows the syntax of abstract mathematics, which is extremely powerful and also extremely obscure to non-mathematicians. Also, once you learn APL using a true APL keyboard it turns out to be a relatively easy language to understand.
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Data science and abstract mathematics are two different things. APL is not a data science language. Likewise, none of the languages on that list are abstract math languages.
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I'm not sure how he intended his article to demonstrate that APL changed his way of thinking about programming, as what he writes about is all common stuff in most languages nowadays. Certainly when APL was created, this was probably revolutionary, but not nowadays.
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My immediate reaction to the article was: That is most certainly true!
When I learned APL, it quite significantly changed my way of thinking about programming, too. If know little more about APL than it uses a strange character set and a solution can be written in one line, then there is no way you will understand how it really can change your thinking. You have to learn it, not just the meaning of the symbols, but the entire programming model.
APL is not the only language forcing you to think differently. Lisp is another one. And Prolog - it has some relatives, such as regex or Snobol4, or xslt, but doing the entire problem solution in predicate logic is most certainly different from defining a regex for analyzing a string!
I think it is a pity that the only way most programmers can think of programming is the sequential from-begin-to-end C style. The original MacOS and Windows tried to introduce event driven models, but both essentially had to give it up. The only essential change we have had since Fortran II to our way of thinking about programming is not even a change, only an extension: We now solve problems by splitting it into several parallel processes/threads. But each of them might be programmed in Fortran II, at least conceptually. I don't know of any widespread language that has thread concepts as first class citizen; the very most is realized as add-ons: Libraries with classes and methods.
I also think it is a pity that we know at most two operating systems, *nix and Windows - and seen from a distance, they are so similar that I am a little hesitant to refer to them as 'two'. Every now and then, I get nostalgic and dig up some of my old books, typically from the early 1980s, to recall all the great ideas that once were thriving, in language design, OS design and machine architecture. Repeatedly, I ask myself: Why did we abandon all those ideas? Some of them were great! Not all, but some of them could most certainly be revived and tried anew.
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In the early 80s I designed an IBM OEMI Channel to Channel adapter using APL as a register transfer modeling and simulation language. A program written by my boss called SynAPL parsed the APL and synthesized the gates and registers. And the rest of our synthesis system partitioned the chips and produced the metallization masks for sea of gates Gate Arrays. The chips worked first time, no turns.
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An average employee of a small business with less than 100 employees will receive 350% more social engineering attacks than an employee of a larger enterprise. You're saying that small businesses should merge to create bigger companies for safety?
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And here I thought the biggest brand impersonator was my car's manufacturer trying to sell me an extended warranty.
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A VS Code extension for experimental applications of Copilot. Why just use an experimental tool, when you can use an experimental version of the experimental tool?
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Researcher who co-created substance says it is not an April fool’s joke and they hope to deploy it like a robot Because you deserve to know about magnetic turds
Watch the video. Oy.
"The magnetic particles in the slime, however, are toxic themselves." Yeah, not a problem. Go ahead and deploy.
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Microsoft has reportedly announced an internal reorganization earlier this week, which has led the company to regroup its different Android teams under a new Android division. So, I'm guessing a new version of Windows Mobile is out of the question?
Edit: fixed title
modified 3-Apr-22 16:31pm.
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In other news, a custom dice maker has reported an order for several thousand D10 marked:
3.1
98
NT4
2k
XP
Visa
7
8
10
11
It's believed that Microsoft intends to provide these to their iconographers to help them make sure their new Android skin has an appearance more consistent with Windows.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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According to the official Windows 11 Health Dashboard documentation, Microsoft placed an update block for some Internet Explorer users. I've got good news, and I've got bad news
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Sounds like this is related to the retirement of IE 11 in general.
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It's hard to imagine a world that's reached the ceiling for innovation when it comes to the speed of electronic devices. But that's exactly what a global team of scientists has done. I can't compute 55 (petahertza)
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The researchers have calculated a limit on the speed of digital devices. They have not ruled out faster alternative technologies.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Steven Giesel recently published a 5-part series documenting his experience building a Kanban-style Todo-app using Uno Platform for the first time. Just in case writing a cross-platform ToDo app was on your ToDo list
Compare and contrast with all the other ToDo apps out there (and there are...a few)
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Huh, that's pretty cool. Though it reminds me of the question I seem to ask everyday: are we making things more complicated than they need to be, or simpler, or hiding complexity? 
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A man says he was forced to hack into a domestic Indian airline's website to find his missing luggage. Let he who is without luggage throw the first hack
'The airline also said it was "reviewing this case in detail and would like to state that our IT processes are completely robust".' <-- riiiiiiight
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So, will he be prosecuted like the poor guy in Missouri who did the same thing and discovered lists of SSNs for Missouri state employees?
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