Re: [Bug-apl] location of cursor on new apl session

[Blake McBride]

On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 5:03 PM, <address@hidden> wrote:

...

now to convince the stubborn gnuapl dev that a 'comment is a comment' in a fns       you don't want wikipedia to say ... a comment is a comment in EVERY COMPUTER PROGRAMMING lang except gnuapl ... do you ?  ;)

Wow.  I hadn't been following the starting cursor thread or comment del thread because I thought it petty and surprising that so much time would be spent on such trivial matters.  Didn't realize it came to this level.  Perhaps I can offer some of my own opinions on the matter.

1.  The GNU APL creator did not invent APL.  It has long been accepted that, for better or worse, IBM had set the standard.  GNU APL is an implementation of the IBM APL 2 spec.  I like that.

2.  There are things I disagree with in the IBM spec, but the spec is the standard.  As one deviates from the spec, one deviates from APL.  Eventually, it's not APL, it's some APL inspired new language.

3.  APL is an old language.  Some of us used it back in the 80's for a living.  Being able to use what we are familiar with is nice.  Every little nit that is different is an annoyance.

So, this is not about building what you or Wikipedia thinks is right.  And it's not about building something theoretically correct.  It's about building APL.  Personally, I can't imaging GNU APL fitting the bill better than it does.

Blake McBride