r/apljk on reddit is also active.
+/%#
to people. But the real expressive power comes when you start to get into tacit expressions yourself, understand function exponents, and "get" under.
Hmmm... maybe I need a refresher...
Based on the one thing I remember in APL I'm guessing the first two characters are "sum over some data structure" and the data structure is what the next two mean. What does it mean entirely?
+/ sums the items of the array.
# counts the number of items in the array.
% divides the sum by the number of items.
127 * sin (range sample_rate)*2*pi*freq_hz/sample_rate
It also took me a little while to get used to the operator precedence (always right-to-left, no matter what), but it does indeed make expressions (and the compiler) simpler. The other thing that impresses me is being able to say:
maximum:if x > y x else y end
# python
[127 * sin(x * tau * freq / samplerate) for x in range(samplerate)] # python
from numpy import sin, arange, pi
127 * sin(arange(samplerate) * 2 * pi * freq / samplerate) foo(x)
[foo(x) for x in somelist]
You can get some nice speed-ups in Python by pushing iteration into a list comprehension, because it's more specialised in the byte-code than a for loop. It's a lot easier in Lil, since it often Just Works.
Also missing Uiua.
You are working in a REPL, starting with small expressions to verify they are roughly doing what you want and then composing them to build up until you can plug it all together and now have a formula you can plug into the calculator to plug and chug all the rest of your data.
So in that sense yeah it does kind of replicate the magic of the first time you got a complex equation or BASIC program to run on your TI back in your school days.