https://www.hillelwayne.com/tags/j/ Recent content in J on Hillel Wayne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/toolbox-languages/ Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/toolbox-languages/ A toolbox language is a programming language that’s good at solving problems without requiring third party packages. My default toolbox languages are Python and shell scripts, which you probably already know about. Here are some of my more obscure ones. AutoHotKey Had to show up! Autohotkey is basically “shell scripting for GUIs”. Just a fantastic tool to smooth over using unprogrammable applications. It’s Windows-only but similar things exist for Mac and Linux. https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/sudoku/ Sun, 10 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/sudoku/ A Sudoku Puzzle is a famous Japanese puzzle. In it you solve a 9 by 9 grid of numbers, but you don’t need to do any math to solve the sudoku puzzle! In each number you put a row and column, and also a number in each box. We will solve the Sudoku Puzzle with programming, by writing a program that solves the Sudoku Puzzle. This can be done in any programming language. https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/j-notation/ Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/j-notation/ Kenneth Iverson’s 1964 language, APL, won him the Turing Award. His award lecture, Notation as a Tool of Thought, argued that better notations would lead people to deeper insights about mathematics. He provided a number of examples ranging across linear algebra, arithmetic, probability, and logic. Unfortunately, most of the mathematics he covers isn’t relevant to programming. However, his core idea still applies, and changing how we describe programs changes how we think about them. https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/talk-fast/ Mon, 28 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/talk-fast/ I speak very fast. It’s like the words are piled up in my mouth and I can’t say one without the rest tumbling out. Through my whole life people have told me to slow down, speak more clearly, and enunciate. I can do it if I concentrate but I quickly relapse into gushing out words. As I now give lots of conference talks, this has become a professional issue: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/the-problem-with-apls/ Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/the-problem-with-apls/ Note: I’m coming from this from the perspective of a J programmer. Maybe K or Dyalog or something solved this already, I don’t know, but I would be pretty surprised if they did. The more I work with an APL, the more I notice a serious problem. Not the weird symbols, you get used to that pretty fast. Not the write-only aspect, that’s annoying but can be solved with a good syntax highlighter. https://www.hillelwayne.com/burn-rate-j/ Tue, 21 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/burn-rate-j/ In January I start EMT Training and maybe make at least one of my childhood dreams come true. I’ve been saving for years for this: while the program is cheap, I’m effectively losing my monthly salary. I found it really easy to calculate my burn rate in J. I’ve talked about J before so I’ll assume you know the basics and we can skip all of that. Note: Just to be absolutely clear, the numbers below are made up. https://www.hillelwayne.com/handwriting-j/ Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hillelwayne.com/handwriting-j/ I think by hand. It’s easier for me to write my first drafts on a tablet and type them up afterwards. I can’t do this with code, though. Here’s me scrawling out a python function as fast as possible: That took three times longer to write than type. Something about code being optimized for legibility and IDE usage and lame stuff like that. I still like the idea of writing code, though, so I looked for a language that wasn’t just easy to write, but benefited from being hand-written.