Mastering Dyalog APL
by Bernard Legrand · first published 2009
14mentions
8recommended by
12HN commenters
2016–2024first – last mentioned
67% recommend25% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Free, long, example-driven tutorial for learning Dyalog APL, praised as excellent by readers starting out; useful for newcomers to the array language and anyone wanting a structured introduction from the vendor.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…older versions 14 free for non-commercial use (Windows), and they offer their current version 17 free for non-commercial use if you give them your full details (maybe Linux as well?). There is a book "Mastering Dyalog APL" by Bernard Legrand from ~2008 which is available as a PDF with companion files from: https://www.dyalog.com/mastering-dyalog-apl.htm although they have added to the language since that book was released.…
on “Non-English-based programming languages” ↗There is also an interactive try APL website by the folks at Dyalog I believe. At least they link to it. Dyalog also has a free Mastering Dyalog APL book that although implementation specific is general enough. J is a similar free & open source APL-like language with several tutorials.
on “50 Years of APL Datatypes (2016) [pdf]” ↗The Mastering Dyalog APL book is available as a free PDF, too. Though the paper version is more enjoyable, and serves as an excellent monitor stand in need, as well. As a Scheme programmer, one of the first things I did when…
on “AMA: Explaining my 750 line compiler+runtime designed to GPU self-host APL” ↗I learned APL on a mainframe over 30 years ago, which is not something I'd recommend (also, you're unlikely to have access to one), but rumor says Dyalog has good tutorials, such as "Mastering Dyalog APL", see links here https://www.dyalog.com/getting-started.htm As for K, Stefan Kruger's text seems like a good introduction https://xpqz.github.io/kbook/Introduction.html
on “Conway's Game of Life in APL in Forth” ↗https://xpqz.github.io/learnapl/intro.html - is a good place to start. After that consider “Mastering Dyalog APL” it’s a freely available book by Dyalog
on “APL: An Array Oriented Programming Language (2018)” ↗Due to some recent discussions here and on Reddit I decided to take a look at APL again. I'd previously toyed with it several years ago, and J a couple times before that. I started on the Mastering Dyalog APL book [0] this week and it's an excellent tutorial so far. Came across this site while trying to show APL to some colleagues. It's been posted here several times before [1], decent amount of discussion…
on “TryAPL” ↗Hey, small world! :) I hope that you're enjoying it, too. Mostly I've just been using the articles and resources on the J Wiki. But I found it useful to skim through the free book, "Mastering Dyalog APL" [1] -- of course the languages aren't identical, but they're similar enough that many of the APL examples were instructive. I also have the NuVoc page on speed-dial. :) I have definitely not memorized…
on “APL and J (2015)” ↗For APL I started with the Mastering Dyalog APL book they have for free on their website which is good, but long. Someone recommended an ancient book I found on Amazon called "APL An Interactive Approach 2nd Ed." I think by Gilman and Rose that is…
on “Thinking in an array language” ↗They also have Mastering Dyalog APL by Bernard Legrand as a free PDF download. I've just starting reading it, seems to be a very gentle introduction to APL: http://www.dyalog.com/mastering-dyalog-apl.htm
on “APL Tutorial” ↗…something like a tome of documentation of a ratio of about 1.5 paragraphs per line of code. That would give us mere mortals a fighting chance at grokking these tools." You can download a free PDF copy of Mastering Dyalog APL by Bernard Legrand which is 700+ pages, from here: https://www.dyalog.com/mastering-dyalog-apl.htm
on “Thinking in an array language” ↗…you're using points free form, you can pretty much combine everything without having to build classes...etc. Those python examples are much longer even for simple stuff. As far as books go, Dyalog APL has "Mastering Dyalog APL" for free and although Dyalog costs money, a hobby license is free. There is a guy who writes programming languages and books for a living. He recently wrote an array language called "Klong" and a book…
on “A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012)” ↗Well there are books like "Mastering Dyalog APL", but they don't help you think in the language. There is the "Finnish APL Idioms" book which helps a bit. APL and J certainly have libraries, but a lot of functions and libraries that are builtin to…
on “Arthur Whitney's 'B' Language” ↗I'm awaiting delivery of a printed Mastering Dyalog APL book while reading this! I landed on kdb+ after seeking a reasonable alternative to the so called "best in class" Elastic Search/Kibana tooling, fell in love with K once I understood that the syntactic…
on “Is APL Dead? Not anymore” ↗- APL. Trying to finally complete everything in Mastering Dyalog APL [1]. It's a long book. - Complicated regular expressions - Urdu - Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades [2] [1] https://www.dyalog.com/uploads/documents/MasteringDyalogAPL.... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Crusades-Authoritative-History-Holy-L...
on “Ask HN: What's on your learning list?” ↗