«écœuré»

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 7

Among the at-least 35 pages devoted to APL96 at Lancaster in the last issue of Vector (Vol.13, No.2, Oct. 1996), I find no mention of Dr. Michael Zaus’ conference about Parity Logic, although Mike was invited jointly by BAPL and APL Club, Germany. I do not even speak of my own conferences about the Least-Action Principle and Chaos Theory Revisited. Are we included within the «etc.» p.77 of R. Procter’s paper mentioning — almost with disgust — the academic side of the APL/J community? In contradiction with what is written in the same page 77, presentations of submitted papers were not "generally poorly attended" (at least Mike’s and mine). I also remember that at APL94 in Antwerp, I had to double my workshop about Binary Logic (was APL96 as quoted p.82 — the "best conference in terms of excellent presentations and informative workshop and tutorial content..."? As an affidatus of APL conferences since Pisa in 1975 except Sydney and San Antonio, I really doubt it).

Was this attitude deliberate and partial, or simply the consequence of a lack of culture or a lack of interest — which corresponds to the same thing? The only word that fits what I feel is «écœuré» in French (the English equivalents that are given e.g. in the Harrap’s for the translation are indeed inadequate).

Will APL at last become a research tool in Computer Science (a genuine wish, expressed by Ken Iverson a long time ago) and even in physics, or appear as a Duck tool (I have nothing against Dyalog especially, working in fact with many implementations, including J).

Dr. Gérard A. Langlet

[As Vector goes to press, we hear the sad news that Gérard died on 22nd December. Dick Holt posted the following to comp.lang.apl on Christmas Eve: "The APL community deeply mourns the death of Gérard Langlet. His witty, learned, and creative work will long be treasured by his colleagues. Speaking personally, I’ll remember, and miss, him for the rest of my life." ]