[HN Gopher] J vs. K by Example (2005)
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       J vs. K by Example (2005)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2024-02-18 21:13 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (olegykj.sourceforge.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (olegykj.sourceforge.net)
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | Awesome resource; however both J and K are evolving, so we either
       | have multitude of various versions of the languages or a
       | comparison which is outdated - referring to the latest versions
       | of the languages.
        
         | abrudz wrote:
         | J is quite stable. In a set of simple examples, everything
         | would be backwards compatible.
        
       | abrudz wrote:
       | Seems a bit strange to put spaces around (some!) J primitives,
       | but not around K primtives.
        
         | 5- wrote:
         | i thought that was author's impression of the prevailing coding
         | styles in each language.
         | 
         | i think the only consistently whitespace-abundant k (not q!)
         | code i have seen is by bob armstrong:
         | http://cosy.com/K/CoSy.htm
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _J vs. K by Example_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26041598 - Feb 2021 (13
       | comments)
        
       | behnamoh wrote:
       | Were APL, K, J, etc. ever used in production? Array programming
       | seems like a cool idea (albeit being counterintuitive sometimes),
       | and it's maybe one of the tersest syntaxes I've ever seen.
        
         | itishappy wrote:
         | I've heard it's seen limited adoption in finance.
         | 
         | https://github.com/interregna/arraylanguage-companies
        
         | mianos wrote:
         | I mainly work in financial markets. I have personally seen it
         | used many times in some places at most of the places I have
         | worked at. KDB/Q is an important component for historical data
         | and order capture here at OSL. The only issue I have is there
         | are few developers and they cost a lot of money. We are lucky
         | we have a very good one.
        
           | devin wrote:
           | How much is "a lot"?
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | APL came out a LONG time ago and was sold by IBM for awhile. If
         | you look for Dyalog's customers you'll see some recognizable
         | names. Volvo has their entire inventory system in Dyalog APL or
         | something like that if iirc. Kdb+ is used a good bit on Wall
         | Street and also by F1 racing and a few other places. I'm sure J
         | is in use somewhere, but it's probably a bit rarer.
         | 
         | https://www.dyalog.com/case-studies/hercules.htm
        
         | jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
         | APL had non trivial uptake during its heyday.
         | 
         | J is apparently somewhat popular with actuaries and similar.
         | 
         | K/Q is used by a number of finance companies, via the KDB
         | vector database. Here the selling point was that the overall
         | system was great for in memory vector processing of stock tick
         | data.
         | 
         | Arthur Witney also built a language named A+ while at Morgan
         | Stanley that was used in production as an improvement over
         | various previous APL apps.
         | 
         | They're odd languages but have found successful niches.
        
       | airstrike wrote:
       | I read the K (K9) manual[0] and it points to https://shakti.com/
       | as the authoritative place to download K, but the download link
       | is gone and Wayback Machine hasn't helped
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://estradajke.github.io/k9-simples/k9/Introduction.html...
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | Yeah. Arthur Whitney's old company is Kx Systems which sells a
         | vector in memory database for things like financial stock
         | ticker analysis called Kdb+. I forget which version of K it is
         | on. It mostly doesn't matter as most folks use the q-sql DSL on
         | top of it. He then started another company called Shakti with
         | some changes and what I guess is a later version of K. He had a
         | download link up for a bit, but took it down iirc. I wish the
         | site had more about the product listed, but we're not exactly
         | the target audience (more for big banks).
        
         | acrispino wrote:
         | Look at one of the captures around the end of 2021.
        
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