Hacker News: skruger

History of CRMs APL

skruger — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:35:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2026/01/11442828/2eXehpB3Ybe

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47572600

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by skruger in "In Praise of APL (1977)"

skruger — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:45:55 +0000

I faced exactly this situation a few years ago - I went with APL as the “OG”, but it probably doesn’t matter that much. Learning k or j once you know APL is much easier. I wrote a bit about this (apl and k)

https://xpqz.github.io/learnapl

https://xpqz.github.io/kbook

New comment by skruger in "In Praise of APL (1977)"

skruger — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:10:52 +0000

It makes parsing tricky. But for the programmer it’s rarely an issue, as typically definitions are physically close. Some variants like BQN avoids this ambiguity by imposing a naming scheme (function names upper case, array names lower case or similar).

New comment by skruger in "In Praise of APL (1977)"

skruger — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:29:22 +0000

Yes, it's either an array (if A, B and C are arrays), a function derived via the dyadic operator B, with operands A and C being either arrays or functions, a dyadic function call of the dyadic function B (A and C are arrays), or the sequential monadic application of functions A and B to array C, or a derived function as the tacit fork (A, B and C are functions). Did I miss anything?

New comment by skruger in "In Praise of APL (1977)"

skruger — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 10:33:38 +0000

Whilst LLMs still perform weakly in APL, the situation is improving at pace, and giving it a “skill” to evaluate code makes a dramatic difference. I gave a conference talk about it recently (video): https://youtu.be/H_wdKeJ8gt4

Dark energy got even weirder

skruger — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 08:13:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c17xe5kl78vo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409367

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

GPU Array Programming with Parrot

skruger — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:30:39 +0000

Article URL: https://nvlabs.github.io/parrot/index.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45683008

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by skruger in "Zoo of array languages"

skruger — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 09:29:12 +0000

Start here: https://xpqz.github.io/learnapl

or here:

https://xpqz.github.io/kbook

New comment by skruger in "Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact"

skruger — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:50:37 +0000

QinetiQ?

Water sommeliers rival wine terroirs

skruger — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 06:46:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/28/water-sommeliers-rival-wine-terroir

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45099850

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by skruger in "PProlog: A Prolog for Plan 9"

skruger — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 21:13:12 +0000

The author also wrote an APL for Plan9: https://apl.pmikkelsen.com/

Science is winning the Tour de France

skruger — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 05:34:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/cycling/science-is-winning-the-tour-de-france/ar-AA1JhdLX

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44691621

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by skruger in "We should ask AI do coding tasks more efficiently, just for saving tokens"

skruger — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 12:23:11 +0000

As to the training set's depth of APL, yes, it's an issue. However, it's worth seeing how well MoonBit[1, 2] works with LLMs, faced with exactly the same problem -- integrating the LLM directly into the parser pipeline.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnY0F9w1xdM 2: https://www.moonbitlang.com/blog/moonbit-ai

New comment by skruger in "Klong: A Simple Array Language"

skruger — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 21:08:48 +0000

The learning curve isn’t steep. I’d argue the opposite. K is a tiny, tiny language. Put your mind to it, and you’ll be reading it just fine in a weekend. It’s just different. It’s optimised for its wheelhouse.