[Jprogramming] Feedback on beginner's code

[Henry Rich]

I agree with what Raul says (and I know it works, too, because he was my 
main teacher as I was learning J).

The J Dictionary is brief and brilliant; if you're committed to learning 
all of J you might want to start there; but some readers are reminded of 
what Macaulay said about Seneca, that "reading him straightforward is 
like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce".

NuVoc is intended as an easier introduction: much longer, but perhaps 
easier to follow.

And if you haven't found the Dissect addon, I recommend using it to help 
visualize the execution of sentences.

[full disclosure: I wrote Dissect and had a hand in writing NuVoc]

Henry Rich

On 3/13/2016 1:32 PM, Raul Miller wrote:
> My tip would be: dip into the language each day - try to find
> something fun and interesting, of course, but a half hour a day over
> the course of a week will often do more for you than an intense 4 hour
> session.
>
> (Those intense 4 hour sessions, or longer, can be fun, but I would let
> them happen rather than trying to force them.)
>
> Also... Ken Iverson was faced with a really difficult task, when
> writing the dictionary: how do you introduce ideas which are
> inter-related?
>
> Getting a person up to speed is tricky, since there's no really great
> starting point which does not benefit from ideas presented elsewhere.
>
> So... dictionary format - the reference documentation goes into some
> significant detail, but you'll have to do several iterations on
> everything, with some trial and error and mistakes, before you start
> seeing some of the important interconnections. (And then you'll
> sometimes be at a loss for how to explain some of these "incredibly
> obvious" ideas to other people... such is life... or math... or
> something...)
>
> (Also, there's the labs and plenty of non-dictionary documentation,
> some of which will be not quite what you're looking for.)
>
> Hopefully you already had an idea about this, and I am just reminding you.
>
> Thanks,
>