From Anger at MITVMA.MIT.EDU  Wed Jul  4 00:11:42 2007
From: Anger at MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Art Anger)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:11:42 EDT
Subject: [J-learn] Taking the Plunge! (Repeat?) (fwd)
Message-ID: <070704.002653489498.EDT.Anger@mitvma.mit.edu>

All--
The (second) "Repeat?" message which you received on 3 July was sent on
27 June, and was indeed essentially the same as the message I sent a few
hours later without benefit of the Mailman list service.  The cause of the
delay has now been fixed (mixed case in the From-domain), and we may now all
communicate with each other by mailing to the list.

Roger's question below, about the Macintosh version of J, has a reasonably
simple answer:  on the Macintosh, the Apple ("command") key should be used
wherever the documentation refers to "Ctl".  "Context Sensitive" is even
one of the options under the Help pull-down menu, and there is a visual cue
there as to the proper shortcut keys.

Finding this answer in the documentation, however, may be impossible.  I
suspect that the writers felt that the Macintosh implementation was in EVERY
way just like other Unix implementations, and may hardly ever have used J
in that form.
--Art

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: "Roger A. Roach" <rar at MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: [J-learn] Taking the Plunge! (Repeat?)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 14:52:50 -0400
To: Art Anger <Anger at MITVMA.MIT.EDU>

Art,
I got that message on Wed, June 27.  You sent it to a group of
individual addresses.  If you sent it later to the list, it did not
arrive.

I've haven't had too much time, but I've started.  I chose to go
through the primer first.   I'm down to control structures.  It is a
pretty interesting and complex language.  I can see why you would
like it.

Only one question so far.  The primer (vocabulary) talks about being
able to do a CTRL F1 to get context sensitive help.  It doesn't seem
to work on the Mac.   I thought you had a Mac.  Do you know how to
get it to work?

Roger


From Anger at MITVMA.MIT.EDU  Fri Jul  6 22:45:48 2007
From: Anger at MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Art Anger)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:45:48 EDT
Subject: [J-learn] Some more motivation
Message-ID: <070706.230147722819.EDT.Anger@mitvma.mit.edu>

Friends--
I happened to find the web site of Paul Graham--a programmer, a venture
capitalist, and an essayist and speaker.  The two pages listed below offer
first a rationale for learning an "obscure" programming language (it does
mention J), and second a long discussion about what makes a good way to work
and a good place to work (mentioning local company ITASoftware).

  http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

  http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

He also has a long page of interesting quotations from all kinds of people.
--Art