language aesthetics

[William Tanksley Google]

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
>William Tanksley Google wrote:

>>However, I gave up because I couldn't stand the alphabet; APL uses
>>MANY nonstandard characters. K fixes that; it uses only ASCII, and 
>>does so in a very clean way.

>It's ironic that you're mentioning another single-letter language,
when
>the one next door, J, is the proper ASCIIfied successor of APL.

Why should I go next door when K is also a ASCIIfied successor of APL?
And it's undeniably cleaner, as well, since it doesn't use
multicharacter primitives.

I like J, and I learned it first; but after using K for a while I
don't see a reason to go back.

There is one reason to learn J first: there's much more documentation.
The book "J for C programmers" in particular was a wonderful jumpstart
for me.

-Billy