Letter: Kenecdotes

Vector 22:4, page 10

APL in perspective humour

Although I’ve moved away almost completely from the world of APL at work, I still pick out the interesting (to me!) articles in Vector now and then and really enjoyed reading the tributes to Ken Iverson. If you have a follow-up of further memories, you may wish to add this:

I was at Ken’s presentation in Helsinki in 1985 that Michel mentioned and I recall his “very critical marks”in response to questions about APL2 being put extremely politely along the lines of “well, these are the holes in it, it’s illogical, but if that’s what you want, it may be useful”. However, the stinger was at the end, with his final words on the subject being “I’m just glad they didn’t call it APL!”. Warm applause and cheering ensued. It was an honour to meet him then and on my visits to IPSA in Toronto and I treasure my signed copy of A Programming Language – as it’s red, perhaps it should be referred to as The Thoughts of Chairman Ken...?

Regards, Sam

Sam Sexton
Infrastructure Group
Transactions Group (Sales & Trading)