Elias Mårtenson @loke@functional.cafe

Playing around with Wolfram Alpha has taught me that there are some really nice alternative interpretations of units.

The temperature outside is 2.647×10^-5 kiloelectronvolts per Boltzmann constant.

@freemo

Language design dilemma

APL tends to be quite terse, and that's a good thing. However, there are some forms that are annoying to express.

One such expression is the equivalent to Lisp (if X A B). In APL, you can do (A B)[X], i.e. construct an array of A and B and select the element based on X. This works because booleans are integers in APL. The problem with this form is that both A and B are evaluated.

In KAP, I have added the form if(X) { A } else { Y } which does the right thing. It's added as a syntax extension, which means that it's not technically part of the language itself.

The problem with that form is that it doesn't blend very well with the rest of the language when included in a single expression, here's an example from the day 4 solution to Advent of Code:

×/ ({fn ← validators[↑⍵[0]] ◊ if(fn≡⍬) { 1 } else { ⍞fn ↑⍵[1] } }⍤1) element

The way it's written disrupts the rest of the code and makes it seem a lot more complex than it really is.

Dyalog has a form X:A⋄B. However, if X is true, it will immediately return A from the function. It makes it more similar to if(X) return B; in C.

I'd like to find a nice syntax for conditional expressions that fits well with the nature of APL as a language. In the cases where it works well, the Dyalog style looks nice, but it's not general. I also cannot adopt the Dyalog syntax directly because I'm using the colon as a namespace separator.

Look, one can actually write longer programs in KAP: https://github.com/lokedhs/array/blob/master/demo/advent-of-code/part04.kap

Of course, one could compress this down to just a handful of lines, but then it would be much less readable.

Sorry, I can't work right now, computer is not available.

Is there a game similar to Sim City or Cities Skylines for Android? I'm looking for something which is not freemium. In other words, no pay to win.

I'm willing to pay money to get such a game, but it seems every single one (and there is a lot) resort to free to play because it makes them a lot if money when people want to play buy more land or whatever it is that they manage to get people to pay for.

I'm hoping there is a paid game that is hiding somewhere that isn't absolutely filled with free to play stuff.

Singapore has new COVID rules regarding restaurants starting today, the precise rules are in a comment in this thread. I just found the post quite funny.

https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/on6pzh/customer_i_would_like_a_table_for_5_restaurant/

I've been writing some solutions to Advent Of Code in KAP in order to demonstrate how their language works. It's also useful for me to actually solve some real problems with it. When designing a language it's easy to get stuck in theory rather than paying attention to how it can actually be used.

Here's the code: https://github.com/lokedhs/array/blob/master/demo/advent-of-code.kap

I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Wow. No new cases of COVID today in Singapore. This is the first time that happened since the delta spike started about 2 months ago.

Singapore has done a good job containing COVID. However, it's not all good news. I believe the strict measures taken to make sure that happens have caused a lot of mental health issues. I certainly can feel that myself, and see it in others. And there was some new statistics shown that the number of suicides have gone up by a huge amount. In fact, the number of suicides exceed the number of COVID deaths.

That said, I'm glad that I'm not in charge of the COVID response. Looking back, I think that pretty much every decision I would have taken would have been a bad one, resulting in more suffering than we see now.

Looking for an artist to design a logo

For some time I have been working on programming language, KAP, which is a derivative of APL. The implementation is open source, as all languages should be.

The project itself does not have a logo, and all programming languages should have a logo.

Now, I have exactly zero artistic skills, and I know there are artists here that could help me out.

I will of course pay for the effort, since I do not expect anyone to create a logo for a project they do not use for free. If you have an idea, then let me know about it and how much you want for the effort and I'm sure we can come to an agreement.

Just look at the project page and you'll see just how empty it seems without a logo: https://github.com/lokedhs/array