A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012)
The TSDB is now called 'jd'[0] FWIIW. Funny, I've been using J on and off since then and I'm still not sure if it's genius or insane. It, along with the other APLs, is definitely its own thing, just as much as Lisp is (my previous favorite weird language was Yann LeCun and Leon Bottou's "Lush,"[1] which I continue to think is an amazing design). Once you get a little bit proficient at it, you finally realize what an actually high level programming language could be.<p>I think it's an idea whose time has come in some ways: hardware is more array-like than ever. J has evolved a lot from 806 to the present 902 beta; lots of performance increases from moving away from the single core paradigm (where it excelled anyway). Lots more to unlock there as well, and some interesting J-based startups brewing[2]. I also think it's one of the best user communities I know of.<p>Oh yeah, Art's new language Shakti[3] should probably be mentioned. Lots of people excited about this.<p>[0]<a href="https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Overview" rel="nofollow">https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Overview</a><p>[1]<a href="http://lush.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">http://lush.sourceforge.net/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.monument.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.monument.ai/</a> for example<p>[3] <a href="https://shakti.com/" rel="nofollow">https://shakti.com/</a>