APL-landing to Kronstadt island (an experience of APL operation)

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 82

Key-words: … APL, Russia, Kronstadt, IBM PC XT/286 with no hard disk, TryAPL2, Per Gjerlov.

A Bit of History¶

We have got this precious experience you will read about in the cold and windy November heart of Russian Navy locations.

Perhaps we can tell nothing if you have never heard about Kronstadt. Its tale begins with Sweden warriors who have occupied this island once upon a XIV century. Then there was a kind of ping-pong game: it was occupied by Russians, then by Swedes again, then by Russians again. Finally it was reserved by Russian czar, Peter The Great, who has built a fort there and said his famous words: "From here we’ll threaten Swedish labour, for fear to be our haughty neighbour!". As the translation is ours, to say it in ordinary language: "This island belongs to me!" Then there were some wars, some revolutions, until we had the year of 1992 coming. This historical (with no doubt) year APL’92 was held in St.Petersburg. When it was held, some participants had clearly decided in addition to their sightseeing of Kronstadt to visit the school of that beautiful sea-town.

How has this story begun?¶

All persons who paid that noble visit were veterans of APL movement. They found a Kronstadt school having several IBM PCs, but no APL at all! Everything they could do was Erkki Juvonnen’s courses plus Per Gjerlov’s visit. They saved up money enough to pay for whole of Erkki’s and half of Per’s. The only problem was to interpret what Per would say (as they had only several persons speaking English and none of them could understand APL terminology).

So he had invited us and we came in a moment. Nick Puntikov has taken us to Kronstadt immediately.

Everybody was excited with Per’s visit, especially island teacher Mr. Spiegel. He (i.e. Spiegel) made himself an engine of the course. Thanks to him Per and we could find an accommodation on the very island. So we found a place to stay at a nice ancient hotel, which is known there as "Three Bananas". A small apartment contained a long and narrow room with furniture of style and age of 50ths. But we were fond of our hotel (at least we hadn’t had to sleep under an open sky). And all during the days we had splendid time and luxurious parties at Spiegel.

What is the Problem?¶

The school we taught in was not an ordinary one. Pupils were tested thoroughly to get in there. They’re now taught of different kinds of subjects with the newly-designed courses.

The other important thing is that they are studying Junior Achievement course, which is said to be "the oldest, largest and fastest growing" economics program in the world, so more than 1.5M students participate in its different courses each year. This subject (i.e. economics) is very new and actual for the former USSR republics. Suddenly we were thrown into the cold water of wild business, so we had to learn how to swim in there. Some study it by their own skin, others take course like JA. It includes theory of marketing and management (with the basic economics), business English and a computer program to practise the lessons for better mastering.

This program was designed by Harvard Associates which develops different educational software (including JA software also). The program simulates an economic situation and lets a student decide what to do. Then it returns the results of the decision and lets decide once more. It is really powerful for educating, but there are the following features it does not have: graphical representation of results exceeded, mathematical and statistical tools.

These last are those which APL is best for. So the idea was if APL could be used for economics. We were able to prove it could!

Though economics seems to be social science, it has a great number of mathematical tools to use (from tax and profit formulas to various analyzing systems) to get the results.

APL is very similar to jazz; it gives you all the possibilities to improvise. Actually, we had no strict plan to follow; but that what we were doing was double brain-attack. First was in the evening when we were discussing an economic (or any other) problem ourselves; next day we were bringing the results into the class and discuss again in there. Using this method we could work out an efficient way of graph drawing (even with those graphical primitives of TryAPL2).

So the most excited thing was that (though we had it taught for 2 days only) pupils WERE interested in APL. They constantly asked if they would continue their lessons.

The Rest¶

All the rest is covered with a thin mist. The mist is thin because recently the author received a letter from Kronstadt. They say Per’s visit was really enjoyable.

In another letter, received from Per himself, who successfully reached Denmark, it is said that Kronstadt would be his best memory of the year. Same is for us.

The Results¶

Actually, the work is not finished yet. Per is going to visit Kronstadt for another session. We’re going to join him.

Now we could learn the difference between APL educational programs. It should be noticed that I-APL proved that it was really the best for LEARNING one. It has ready-made self-introducting WS, mathematical tools WSes, graph plotting WS, music and memory operations WSes etc. This is what IBM can use to show the possibilities and power of APL2.

But we enjoy both I-APL & TryAPL2 and hope they both will prove their great use for education, even economics.

In addition, we were interested in JA course ourselves, and we are going to make APL-accompaniment for this program, like APL-idioms & APL-exercises. We ask anyone who knows of using APL for this or other economic courses and can help us in this regard, please contact us.