As a previously very active poster here on edu-sig, I thought I'd drop in to say I'm still focused on math-through-programming (as a great way to teach), but am off sojourning in J these days. Earlier, Tim Peters pointed me to ISETL as in some ways a precursor to Python, and that was cool (I enjoyed my experiences with that language). He also pointed me to 'Concrete Mathematics' as a paradigm text at the college level, which was a good resource (good to work back from in K-12). I was a philosophy major in the old days and don't necessarily know what's what in computer science. I find Kenneth Iverson has these same interests (math through programming), has already done a companion to 'Concrete Mathematics', and is working on another re 'The Book of Numbers' (Conway and Guy). Excellent! Ken helped me with a close read of my first J essay: http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/Jlang.html (he found a few typos, a misused grammatical term (conjunctive instead of conjunction), and suggested I include viewmat, though not in quite the way I did (to look at totient(n) powers modulo n)). APL was the first language I really got into, in the 1970s, but I'd lost track of Ken (APL's designer), and hadn't really tuned in J until some J guy hit my Python-focused website ( http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/cp4e.html ) and suggested I check it out. Why is this relevant? Well, I'm always going to be a Python fan, so that'll keep bubbling up in my postings to math teacher groups (another one of those just tonight: http://www.mathforum.com/epigone/math-teach/taytrismoo (see mine of 25 July 2002 re passing functions to functions, with Python illustrating)). The fact that I'm mixing it up with J (long, steep learning curve) is probably somewhat indicative of where I might be finding synergies and curriculum ideas. Fortune tellers will tell. Perhaps some other Pythoneers tracking this list have some overlap with J as well? Anyone care to opine re J? (I see D. Ajoy on Jforum -- he's been helpful with Python, used to send me Logo programs in Spanish too). Cliff Nelson is over there too, but I'm not planning to argue with him anymore (we've mostly argued to date, maybe cuz he likes Ada-the-language whereas I like Ada-the-girl [1]). Question: why do both J and Python define 0**0 (or 0^0 in J) to be 1, when mathematicians (and Wolfram's Mathematica) call this undefined? Speaking of Wolfram, I did the simplest cellular automata from NKS in J. Output looks like this: http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/graphics/Jnks1.png (this is after doing similar stuff in Python -- posted about it to this list in late May of this year). Kirby [1] http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/adaessay.html