Editorial: Professionalism and spreading the word

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

Editorial¶

Professionalism and spreading the word

I am writing this on the eve, so to speak, of the AGM as a member of the retiring committee. Now is the time to review what we have done and to decide what we ought to do next.

The main efforts of the Association over the last year or so have been taken up on three things: Vector, “Activities” – our regular meetings at the Royal Over-Seas League – and APL 86.

Vector¶

Vector is now a successful and established feature of the world-wide APL scene. It would be a mistake to make a radical change in its style (as the members’ responses to the recent questionnaire show). If there were a large influx of new members who needed more elementary articles on APL, there is both room in Vector to accommodate them and people to write them. The Vector team have reduced costs and increased advertising revenue. Once Vector drained almost the whole of our subscription revenue; now it is nearly self-financing and with a few more advertisements could even become profitable. We need to share out the work among more people and provide them with as much help as possible with their task. A few modems might make it easier to get more people working without excessive postal delays.

Activities¶

Our regular meetings were not planned far enough in advance in the early part of last year. The consequence was that our Publicity Officer was unable to publicise them except rather late and only to members. Over the year we have not obtained a single entry in any of the many listings of future events in the trade press. The current Activities team are now planning ahead and perhaps next year we shall get some publicity and this will improve attendance at meetings. When a subject, although of great interest to members, would not justify a company releasing staff to attend we should recognise this and either include it in a meeting with material of legitimate company interest or hold an evening meeting for it. Explicitly commercial presentations of APL products have not been encouraged. We are, it is true, an Association of users, but we are also an Association of Vendors and should welcome Vendor publicity and press coverage of product launches at our meetings. The Association could do a lot more for Vendors without either compromising our independence or getting accused of commercial bias.

APL 86¶

APL 86 is the latest and largest of a series of special events which have greatly enhanced the standing and prosperity of the Association. They have been well run (largely by volunteers) and well publicised within the APL community if not so well outside. Ideally such events should be run by people who do not have other onerous duties so as not to distract them from the essential work of the Association.

Aims¶

The Association has done well and served its members well over the last year, yet it has not pursued all its aims adequately. Compare what has been done with the objects of the Association as printed in Vector vol. 1 no. 4:

1. To promote the use of APL
2. To develop awareness and competence in APL
3. To represent the interests of Association members with other bodies
4. To contribute to the development of the language and definition of international standards

Practically the whole of our efforts is being spent on item b in this list. To put it another way we are spending over 90% of our efforts providing services to members and almost none on persuading non-APLers to try using APL.

Emphasis¶

The emphasis is right but overdone. It is right because for the Association to flourish it must provide benefits to its members attractive enough to keep them and recruit more of them. It should provide every practical kind of useful help to members to enable them to do their jobs better; a major part of this is keeping everyone up to date with news and reviews through Vector. These services must all continue and be expanded (as for example they have been by the launch of the public domain software library).

On the other hand it is overdone because our first object is to promote the use of APL and we have scarcely been doing that at all. We have left it almost entirely to the vendors.

Some initiatives in education, soon to come to fruition in a course for teachers, have been almost the only approach to anyone outside the Association to interest them in APL. We do remarkably little to help the novice, and there probably are more novices than experts in the Association. Even Vector has few articles which are designed to help a novice to improve.

Innovations¶

What new things could we do?

We could distribute Vector free to educational libraries to encourage interest.

We could produce some introductory leaflets to attract people to take their initial curiosity further.

We could produce an annotated booklist to help people choose the right book for their purpose.

We could provide a list of the currently available ways of providing oneself with a cheap personal APL facility, with a note of the advantages and limitations of each.

We could provide reports on the use of APL in education and sources of advice for teachers willing to try it.

We could provide a list of the names and addresses of APLers willing to help newcomers to APL in their spare time.

We could provide a range of workspaces through the public domain software library, each of which offers APL help with the teaching of a particular topic.

APL began as a notation, became a computer language and is fast becoming a microcomputer language. There may already be more people who use APL on a microcomputer than on a mainframe: if not true now it will be before long.

Soon, too, we shall be able to give away copies of I-APL to anyone who wants to try out APL on their home or school microcomputer. The I-APL mailing list (people who have written to enquire about it) is over 400 names and fast approaching 500. Note, this is before I-APL is complete and certainly before any attempt at a launch. The list will probably double or quadruple when it is launched. Over a tenth of enquirers are teachers at schools or colleges.

If the APL Association prepares to make it worth the while of these dozens of newcomers to APL to join we can double our membership or more.

That should be our aim. If APL doesn’t attract new, young, keen recruits its future will indeed be bleak.

Anthony Camacho, 29 May 1987

Draft APL Standard Available¶

A copy of the draft ISO Standard can now be yours for a mere £7.50 ($4.00 to BSI members). Write to Sales Admin (Drafts), BSI, Linford Wood, Milton Keynes, MK14 6LE. Quote document 86/67927 ISO/DIS 8485 Programming languages – APL (ISO/TC97).

Significant modification to the draft before it becomes a full International Standard is now extremely unlikely.

D. M. Ziemann