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JeffLeader@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) writes:
> Alexandre Kampouris <usenet@Radio-BIP.qc.ca> wrote:
> >I used to describe Matlab as APL with a human readable character set.
>
> I was drawn to MATLAB because it could do so much of what APL could do
> and was as a practical matter easier to find or load on a given
> platform. For academic purposes one of the big things remains the
> graphics--even people who continue to work in FORTRAN teach their
> students how to export results to MATLAB for plotting, it seems.
>
> >I never managed
> >personally to write an APL program more than 20 lines long
>
> Ah, yes. If one uses APL often enough it's great. But I can teach
> MATLAB to sophomores and they can use it 2 years later for a small
> part of a bigger project--that's a real advantage.
>
> But, I miss (a lively presence of) APL.
When I started using each of Matrix, matlab, octave, one of the first
things is to get (real) reshape, take, drop, member, etc going as
m/whatever files. Now I can compile apl fns into mex files, so I have
some of both worlds.
When I grab a new apl (or J) I first port a plotting package (that I
wrote for old tek 4010's), and eventually parts of eispack.
Nothing's exactly ideal, but with unix/X there's lots of freedom and
it's fairly easy to get things done.
--
Sam Sirlin
Email: sam@kalessin.jpl.nasa.gov
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