Topic
Array Oriented Functional Programming in APL
Speaker
Morten Kromberg
When
Tuesday, 7:30 PM
Where
Marist College, Hancock Center (Building 14 on map), Room 2023. We thank Marist College for hosting the chapter's meetings. Parking: 1) Lot north of Hancock Center. We are permitted to park there in spite of the signs. 2) Lot on south-east corner of Route 9 and Fulton Street. Take staircase at south-west corner of lot, and tunnel under Route 9.
More Information
This program is free and open to the public. Attendees should RSVP at Meetup.com.
All are welcome to join us beforehand for dinner at the Palace Diner at 6:00 PM.
For further information, go to Pok.ACM.org (QR code below):
About the Topic
APL is a member of a group of languages that are approaching middle age. Ken Iverson's book, A Programming Language, was published in 1962. APL was very influential in the 60s and 70s, and widely used to deliver “end user computing” — but although its read-eval-print loop, dynamic scope, and lack of a type system endeared APL to domain experts, it also drew fire from computer scientists, most famously when Edsger Dijkstra declared that “APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.”
Although APL moved out of the computing mainstream, and disappeared from many computer science departments in the 80s, the language has evolved continuously for 50 years, in an environment where dozens of bright new languages have burst into view and faded again. Current Dyalog APL is a modern, array-first, multi-paradigm programming language, which supports functional, object-oriented and imperative programming based on an APL language kernel.
Dyalog APL allows people with good ideas — from bright high school students to Ph.D.s — to contribute directly to the software development process using a notation which fits comfortably with those used in their own domains. Curiously, although APL was designed as a notation for communication between humans, with little regard for computer hardware architecture, the array operations supported by APL turn out to make extremely efficient use of modern hardware. Modern hardware has multiple cores and depends on efficient use of cache memories — and as a result, functional, array oriented programming is more relevant than ever before.
About the Speaker
Morten Kromberg is the CTO of Dyalog Ltd — a leading vendor of APL systems. Before that he spent 20 years as an APL consultant, and 5 years as the CTO of Adaytum Software, where he was responsible for the development of a business intelligence package which used Dyalog APL as the core technology. Following the sale of Adaytum to Cognos in 2002 for $160 million, Morten participated in a management buy-in of Dyalog's APL technology in 2005. In 1990, together with Dyalog CEO Gitte Christensen, Morten received SIGAPL's Kenneth E. Iverson Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Development and Application of APL. Morten is a regular speaker at international software conferences.
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