British APL Association News

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 13

We are very proud of Vector and are giving this issue to every delegate at APL89 in New York. While we are a national special interest group, everyone enthusiastic about APL knows that it is a language that bridges cultural barriers, both national and professional. Overseas membership of the British APL Association (BAA) brings with it four airmailed copies of Vector per year for about $45.

Last week I was invited to a meeting of the British Airways APL Association (BAAA?) at Heathrow Airport for the presentation of the BAA's Outstanding Achievement Award. The demonstration of AIMS, the information management system which is the subject of the award, was impressive.

I enjoyed Maurice Jordan's talk which followed the presentation. He covered some of the things he had been up to recently, such as function point analysis and 'assertive comments', comments written in a slightly enhanced APL on characteristics of the data being manipulated. I gathered that these assertive comments could be evaluated for truth at the debugging stage, then were left in as comments, but not evaluated. Maurice said more time was spent debugging the assertive comments than the rest of the code, which might at first sight make them seem self-defeating, but to the contrary were worth every bit of trouble they caused because of the rigorous thought needed to get them right. I am looking forward to hearing more about assertive comments because I suspect Maurice is onto a significant development.