Editorial: Keep your Eyes on the Prize

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

For me, Sydney was a wonderfully refreshing experience! Not just the smell of salty air from the harbour ferries, or even the 116n.o. from Chris Broad on the first day of the Bicentennial Test Match: more the feeling from almost everyone there that we knew where we were going. In any grouping of like-minded individuals, it is essential to have such gatherings, lest we begin to drift around in the kind of short-sighted fog which seems to beset all human endeavours which involve more than 7 people, or last more than 7 years!

APL86 was just the same ... and I would guess that those who returned from Dallas also felt this clearing of vision; the problem is to keep it going in the day to day business of running companies, getting hassled by users, cleaning up after the children, getting VECTOR out on time, and so on. Of course you can't, at least not for all that long, so that is why events like APL88 are so vital in assuring our collective future.

In short, we need to 'keep our eyes on the prize' as long as we possibly can. Then we need to gather ourselves together to renew our confidence, and to re-affirm our long-term commitment to APL, rather than to some particular APL project that we happen to be working on. During APL88, I felt that we really did hold certain truths to be self-evident; let me try and get them on paper before I too forget!

APL is first and foremost a notation; it is the best way yet devised of doing mathematics on a computer. Many things which are currently hidden in the fog of conventional notation are crystal clear (apologies to Don McIntyre for the pun) when written down in APL. The fact that you have on your desk a 'native speaker' of this notation is a marvellous bonus; it is not the reason we are here. The reason we need APL is to help us see things more clearly. If we then had to code them in FORTRAN it would be a nuisance, but it would not be the end of the world!

APL needs to pull together. We have done ourselves an incredible disservice by allowing the divergence into two fundamentally different flavours. Regarding APL as no more than a quick way of generating computer systems, such a split hardly matters. Regarding APL as a movement towards a more consistent and effective notation, it is an absolute disaster. We must get our act back together if we are to have any chance of gaining acceptance of anything beyond plain 'VS APL'.

I-APL is our big chance; we must not fluff it! If we screw this one up we may never get APL accepted where it really belongs ... in the junior schools, the high schools, the Technical Colleges, and the Universities. It will retain a shrinking base in a few big companies, and we shall all get older. In 10 years time there will be rather fewer of us, and our systems will mostly be 10 years old, and due for replacement. Will we have the energy and the resources to fight for anything outside our own little patch? I rather fear that we shall not.

I know that there is always a temptation to keep a good thing to yourself. The medieval craft guilds were built around just this principle! I know that I have a bit of the reputation of a magician in some circles in my company; I could trade on this by keeping all my nice APL knowledge to myself, or I could try to broaden the base of APL experience and consequently undermine my (quite unjustified) reputation.

In my case, I know that the decision is an easy one: I have no desire to be a magician, and I really do want to encourage the growth and spread of APL. That is exactly the feeling I got from the overwhelming majority of delegates at APL88 (and indeed from APL86). Let's just make sure we do 'keep our eyes in the prize'; it's a long time to APL89, and it is all too easy to put tomorrow's personal advantage before APL's future.

Dates for future issues of VECTOR (note 5.2 dates)¶