Algebraic Programming Language APL

[Joseph_21sv]

(10-20-2017 09:48 PM)BobVA Wrote:  "APL" might be confusing as there is already a programming language by that name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(progr..._language)

[Seeing "calculator" and "APL" certainly got my interest up. Maybe somebody will port it to the Prime. :-) ]

From that Wikipedia page: "The growth of end-user computing tools such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access has indirectly eroded potential APL usage. These are frequently appropriate platforms for what may have been APL applications in the 1970s and 1980s. Some APL users migrated to the J programming language, which offers some advanced features. Lastly, the decline was also due in part to the growth of MATLAB, GNU Octave, and Scilab. These scientific computing array-oriented platforms provide an interactive computing experience similar to APL, but more closely resemble conventional programming languages such as Fortran, and use standard ASCII. Other APL users continue to wait for a very low-cost, standardized, broad-hardware-usable APL implementation."
Why is this relevant? The Prime has a spreadsheet as one of its built in application. This is the kind of tool that Microsoft Excel, which is one the tools whose growth "has indirectly eroded potential APL usage", is. Not only that, PPL (i. e. the Prime) can directly operate on entire matrices stored in variables.