EDITORIAL: The men who run VECTOR

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 3

As the working group manfully struggles to put together another issue of VECTOR, I sometimes wonder how we are envisaged by the ordinary member on the Clapham omnibus. Clearly anybody with the awesome title of editor must be a power-crazed would-be press baron, eager only to use his position of influence to propagate his own highly prejudiced view of the world. What then of the rest of the working group?

There is of course the fearsome technical department - people, if such is the word, who only talk from right to left in sentences of one line. No doubt they spend their evenings huddled round cauldrons boiling up evil brews of devious inner products and vile concoctions from APL2. (Rumour even has it that they may understand parts of the I.S.O. standards.) And when they have nothing more rewarding to do, they pass the time dismembering innocent competition entries.

Looking round the rest of the working group, things hardly improve. There are people who have written articles, and even whole books, about APL. No doubt these authors lead a Bohemian existence in Bloomsbury, punctuated only by the occasion visit to the Royal Overseas League to throw a few pearls of wisdom before the assembled masses.

With such a daunting editorial group, a sane reader's instinctive reaction may well be to turn his attention to other more fruitful topics, such as how to incorporate the latest impossible user request into the system before the next monthly run this afternoon. "At least they don't want me to write an article for their journal. They wouldn't publish it and, after all, nobody wants to know about what I am doing. It's all very simple and doesn't even use an inner product. Anyway I don't spend much time programming." Perhaps similar thoughts have crossed your mind, so let me tell you about some of the people who really do want you to tell us all what you're doing.

First, there's the person who doesn't actually know much about APL himself. He happened to pick up a spare copy of VECTOR that was lying around the office and thought he'd take the chance to find out what all those funny Greek characters are about. What he'd like to read about is how APL is affecting the ordinary user, the range of application areas where it has proved its worth. Perhaps he might even take the plunge and try it for himself some day.

Then there's the sceptic from the computing department who has been brought up on the traditional D.P. approach involving projects measured in tens of man-years. He's heard claims about vast reductions in development times, developing closer links with the end-users, prototype systems, and so on, but wishes somebody would write about how this has been achieved in practice.

What about the APL expert? He's probably trying to build up APL expertise within his company, so that users can take increasing control over their projects and leave him free to tackle new and more challenging problems. He'd really like to know more about other people's experience in getting to grips with APL; what they find easy; what was hard; what sort of people naturally take to APL.

Finally, there's the working group ourselves. We want two things. We certainly want feedback about the sort of material you - the readers - are looking for in VECTOR. But equally we want to hear what you are doing with APL. Running the Journal is already a major occupation, and we certainly don't want to have to write all the text as well.

Of course, not everybody has the opportunity or the inclination to write a full-length article on what they are doing, although there are many whose "little project" would actually be of great interest to a wider audience. However, every reader must have views - favourable or unfavourable - about what they would like to see in VECTOR, and more generally the role they see for APL in the future. VECTOR is your Journal and we can only hope to keep it that way if YOU write in and tell us how you want it to develop.

Dates for future issues of VECTOR¶