> One misconception is that languages like J are in the same caliber as Brain F**k and other esoteric or golfing languages which are mostly for recreational programming. Languages like J however were designed to be a replacement to traditional maths notation - an interface for thinking or a tool of thought as their inventor Kenneth E. Iverson called them in his Turing Award lecture.
Does it actually succeed though? The author aims to show how J helps conceptualize a random walk, but from where I stand, it just makes everything look like a regex or something. I don't see what the insight's supposed to be.
Everybody knows you can do a random walk by simulating an array of random 1 and -1 values and doing a cumsum on that array. You can do that in MATLAB or Python or R too, and it's about as short and more readable.
Does it actually succeed though? The author aims to show how J helps conceptualize a random walk, but from where I stand, it just makes everything look like a regex or something. I don't see what the insight's supposed to be.
Everybody knows you can do a random walk by simulating an array of random 1 and -1 values and doing a cumsum on that array. You can do that in MATLAB or Python or R too, and it's about as short and more readable.