Star Trek and APL
Mike Lorenz
This is admittedly a bit silly, but it's a thought I had recently
while watching an old Star Trek The Next Generation show. You know all
those times when one of the crew goes to a computer terminal and says
it'll take about 30 minutes to reprogram the photon torpedoes to track
a phased warp signature (or whatever the case may be)? Of course they
never show what the person is actually doing, but can you imagine they
are using some 23rd century derivative of Java? Or C++? Or Visual
Basic? Heck no!
When I started thinking about it, it occurred to me that the most
efficient computing language of the future may very well be APL-like
in nature, using symbols to represent high-level functions, and
combining them in various ways to get the job done.
I use C most of the time, and I like it, but I honestly cannot imagine
it still being in heavy use years from now. I can pretty much say the
same for most of the computer languages I've encountered. But there's
something "timeless" about APL. It does not seem like an old language
to me. I think it's really unfortunate that APL has not enjoyed more
popularity. It certainly deserves to.
What better language to use in a crunch, when the ship's heading
straight for a wormhole, and you only have 20 minutes to reprogram the
warp phase inductor coils and save the day? With C, in 20 minutes,
you'll be lucky if a bad pointer hasn't crashed your debugger. With
Java your program may take 20 minutes to *run*. With Lisp it'll take
20 minutes just to balance the parentheses. With COBOL it'll take that
long to finish writing your program headers.
Yep, folks, APL is the language of the future. The programming
community may not realize it yet, but until it does, I'll just imagine
those unseen Star Trek consoles showing APL code! :-)
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Bob Cain
Mike Lorenz wrote:
>
>
> What better language to use in a crunch, when the ship's heading
> straight for a wormhole, and you only have 20 minutes to reprogram the
> warp phase inductor coils and save the day? With C, in 20 minutes,
> you'll be lucky if a bad pointer hasn't crashed your debugger. With
> Java your program may take 20 minutes to *run*. With Lisp it'll take
> 20 minutes just to balance the parentheses. With COBOL it'll take that
> long to finish writing your program headers.
You have finally identified the "killer app" that we have all been
looking for. :-)
Bob
--
"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler."
A. Einstein
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Charles Richmond
>
> Mike Lorenz wrote:
> >
> >
> > What better language to use in a crunch, when the ship's heading
> > straight for a wormhole, and you only have 20 minutes to reprogram the
> > warp phase inductor coils and save the day? With C, in 20 minutes,
> > you'll be lucky if a bad pointer hasn't crashed your debugger. With
> > Java your program may take 20 minutes to *run*. With Lisp it'll take
> > 20 minutes just to balance the parentheses. With COBOL it'll take that
> > long to finish writing your program headers.
>
> You have finally identified the "killer app" that we have all been
> looking for. :-)
>
Does that count???
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Jim Lucas
> Does that count???
Sounds like fun? Can mere 21st-Century mortals get a copy?
And I suppose that if Earth and Klingon forces are at war, it should
qualify -- like so many computer games -- as a "killer" app.
8^) /Jim
Ted Edwards
> Yep, folks, APL is the language of the future. The programming
> community may not realize it yet, but until it does, I'll just imagine
> those unseen Star Trek consoles showing APL code! :-)
Interesting thought. Just let me add that if they did put up an APL
function on those consoles, it would make good theatre. To anybody not
in the know, it would look really way out - clearly something from the
future. For those of us who do know what it is, it would please us no
end. :-)
Ted
Charles Richmond
off of the Star Trek TV show. It is a 68000 machine based on
APL...and I would *love* to have one!!!
Charles Richmond
>
> > I have around here somewhere...a Star Trek game written in APL.
> > Does that count???
>
> Sounds like fun? Can mere 21st-Century mortals get a copy?
>
still find it somewhere in my "stuff". If I find it and fat-
finger the whole thing in...what format would be best for
distribution??? If I typed it in under Sharp APL, for instance,
would that be exportable to something most here could use???
>
> And I suppose that if Earth and Klingon forces are at war, it should
> qualify -- like so many computer games -- as a "killer" app.
>
this version of Star Trek. He translated a BASIC listing from
a magazine (probably BYTE or Creative Computing) to APL. This
must have been done circa 1977 or so...this would limit what
magazine and issue that it could have come from...
Danny Ross Lunsford
> Ermmm...yeah, I guess so. A guy I knew in college put together
> this version of Star Trek. He translated a BASIC listing from
> a magazine (probably BYTE or Creative Computing) to APL. This
> must have been done circa 1977 or so...this would limit what
> magazine and issue that it could have come from...
Even earlier probably. My very first computer experience when I was but a
lad, was on an IBM Selectric which had timeshare access to both APL\360 and
a Dartmouth BASIC system. The killer app on the BASIC system was Star Trek.
Being a serious kind of lad (read - an insufferable grind :) I was more
interested in APL! So, I'll bet the APL code for the Star Trek game is
APL\360 or mabye an early version of APL/SV.
If you avoid Sharp's idiosyncratic approach to enclosure and vector notation
(compared to IBM), the code should be very portable to other APLs.
Michael J Kingston
> Mike Lorenz wrote:
>
> > Yep, folks, APL is the language of the future. The programming
> > community may not realize it yet, but until it does, I'll just imagine
> > those unseen Star Trek consoles showing APL code! :-)
>
> Interesting thought. Just let me add that if they did put up an APL
> function on those consoles, it would make good theatre. ....
Extending the topic a bit, APL already had a Sci Fi mention in the movie
"Runaway". My recollection is that the hero described his training as
being "in APL, Robotics, that sort of thing".
henry mnk crun
I seem to remember a sci-fi animation film from the 70's called "Tron"
in which, iirc, all the graphics were written in APL.
Henry Crun
(an ancient goon and APLer)
Jim Lucas
> Unfortunately, I only have the hardcopy listing...*if* I
> can still find it somewhere in my "stuff". If I find it and
> best for distribution??? If I typed it in under Sharp
> APL, for instance, would that be exportable to
> something most here could use???
Maybe Jim Weigang's translator would be useful here. Or a .gif of the
code put on a web page where others could copy it, each into their own
interpreter.
> A guy I knew in college put together this version of
> Star Trek. He translated a BASIC listing from a
> magazine (probably BYTE or Creative Computing) to
> APL. This must have been done circa 1977 or so...
If that old, it should predate any significant divergences in APL (I don't
think nested/boxed arrays appeared until after 1980), at least as long as
it avoids quad-functions. In fact, I seem to recall that there was a
copy/version of this on the Sharp system back when I was starting out
('78-79). I wonder if it still exists at Soliton.
/Jim Lucas
Jim Lucas
> I seem to remember a sci-fi animation film from the 70's
> called "Tron" in which, iirc, all the graphics were written
> in APL.
Some, but definitely not all.
/Jim
Kevin R. Weaver
of the animation for Tron, and, if my memory is right, he probably did
it using APL.
Kevin R. Weaver
joined STSC he worked on TRON also...and, again, maybe did some APL then
as well. Phew!
Eric Landau
<ke...@nospam.com> wrote:
|Wow, does this take me back...I recall that Judson Rosebush wrote some
|of the animation for Tron, and, if my memory is right, he probably did
|it using APL.
Not only did he use APL, he described his techniques and showed us
some of his lower-level utility functions in a presentation at one of
the SIGAPL conferences (IIRC, it was at APL79 in Rochester).
Eric Landau, APL Solutions, Inc.
"Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger." - Abbie Hoffman
Florian Greese
"Mike Lorenz" <mlo...@visANTISPAMionx.com> wrote in message
news:r91gaukfdgtopgoeq...@4ax.com...
> When I started thinking about it, it occurred to me that the most
> efficient computing language of the future may very well be APL-like
> in nature, using symbols to represent high-level functions, and
> combining them in various ways to get the job done.
Symbols that's it. Not the old fashioned style of the old-day APL, but some
fresh
3D, colored symbols with today-associations for functionality.
So the code would look future-like even for SF-Films in the Future. Apl is
meta-future by nature :-)
Perhaps a little bit more structured (like J (verbs, sentences and so). And
we need a graphical Engine
to construct Code like flowcharts (using these 3D APL symbols). Flowanalysis
before executing
and such nice stuff. Possible parallel execution paths of APL-Data Streams.
Is there someone out there willing to write such a gui (Prototype written in
Java ;-) ) with an portable APL
interpreter as Backend? Some sort of IDE for Libs, idioms and so on?
And a new APL (or J) notation in XML (portable between such IDEs and
independent of the APL interpreter)
Just an Idea.
> What better language to use in a crunch, when the ship's heading
> straight for a wormhole, and you only have 20 minutes to reprogram the
> warp phase inductor coils and save the day? With C, in 20 minutes,
> you'll be lucky if a bad pointer hasn't crashed your debugger. With
> Java your program may take 20 minutes to *run*. With Lisp it'll take
> 20 minutes just to balance the parentheses. With COBOL it'll take that
> long to finish writing your program headers.
>
to crunch or to be crunched thats the question.
Charles Schulz
Curtis Jones alerted me to this thread...
I happened to have the quote buried in files from APL91, where we
showed that clip. You had it right, here is more:
"How long do you say you've been doing this?"
"I just sort of fell into it by accident. Then I kind of
liked it, so I took some night courses in Robotics, APL, that sort of
thing. And then, all of a sudden, I just seemed to know more about it
than anybody else."
Tom Selleck in Runaway, the film by Michael Crichton, 1984.
Sam Sirlin
"Danny Ross Lunsford" <antima...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
...
> Being a serious kind of lad (read - an insufferable grind :) I was more
> interested in APL! So, I'll bet the APL code for the Star Trek game is
> APL\360 or mabye an early version of APL/SV.
Actually I believe there were at least 2 startrek games for APL/SV.
For one, I believe based on a basic game, I recall the klingons were
imobile, and so I spent some time learning about APL and getting them
to move, and perhaps making the galaxy infinite.
--
Sam Sirlin
Email: s...@kalessin.jpl.nasa.gov
Ken Iverson
concerning stars. Running first on a typewriter, the stars were
ordered for line-by-line output. When CRT terminals became
available, it was modified to light the stars in random order,
and the program came to be called The Creation.
----- Original Message -----
From: "News Gateway" <owner...@sol.sun.csd.unb.ca>
To: <AP...@LISTSERV.UNB.CA>
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2002 3:44 AM
Subject: Re: Star Trek and APL
> X-From: Sam Sirlin <s...@kalessin.jpl.nasa.gov>
Ray Cannon
"Ken Iverson" <k...@interlog.com> wrote in message
news:20020414.1...@sol.sun.csd.unb.ca...
> Paul Berry's Starmap was perhaps the earliest APL program
> concerning stars. Running first on a typewriter, the stars were
> ordered for line-by-line output. When CRT terminals became
> available, it was modified to light the stars in random order,
> and the program came to be called The Creation.
>
the web?
http://starmap.causeway.co.uk
Its very fast!
Ray
Danny Ross Lunsford
(Bows) APL is still the coolest thing on the computing planet.
-drl
"Ken Iverson" <k...@interlog.com> wrote in message
news:20020414.1...@sol.sun.csd.unb.ca...
Brian Oliver
> concerning stars. Running first on a typewriter, the stars were
> ordered for line-by-line output. When CRT terminals became
> available, it was modified to light the stars in random order,
> and the program came to be called The Creation.
Ken, let's not forget that Paul had a collaborator in the
Starmap effort. I believe his name was "Thoraldssen" and
he was the astronomer half of the project. Brian
Mark Hache
Anyways ...
In 1979 I was in HS grade 13 in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. For the students of my pre-calculus class, IP Sharp provided a type writer terminal connected to one of their machines. They dedicated ~ $10K and 1 month of computer time for the 25 students. I recall that after seven days out logins were disabled. The teacher reported that, much to the suprise of IP Sharp, we had already blown through the $10K. IP Sharp did an investigation as to what we had been up too. I guess IP Sharp was reasonable impressed because after two days they re-enabled our logins and agreed to allow us the remainder of the month originally promised. I understood that in the final re-conning the 25 of us spent ~S100K. APL has had a special place in my heart ever since.
While at UNB.ca for my undergrad, APL (STSC APL) was a second year course. One day the prof brought in a guy from UNB's computing centre to describe how he programmed the entire scoring and game tracing system for the Canadian Curling Associations Championships (pre-1988). Asked why he would use an archaic and esoteric language as APL he stated, at the time APL had all of the features required to complete the task quickly. Basically, APL was fit for purpose so why not.
Also I should add that one of the 25 found the APL Star Trek game on IP Sharps system. I certain a fair chunk of the money was spent on killing Klingons and Romulans.