In this case, cutting out the superfluous "programming language" part would get you "Understanding-j: An introduction to J that gets to the point" which would fit just fine. When in doubt, include the original title in a comment to explain the edit and let the mods sort it out later.
_3 NB. negative numbers start with underscore
_ NB. sole underscore is infinity: a number
__ NB. negative infinity
Explicitly representing infinity, and working with it in some cases, allows to reduce number of exceptions...
Twenty years ago, studying my computing degree, one semester we learned J. It was unlike anything I’d used before and the entire class found it confusing. The compiler / environment was reportedly written by one of the professors and it was routine to run into bugs; I remember puzzling through something, going to a tutor, and them just shrugging it off as a J interpreter issue. I never grokked it and simply passed the course.
But it keeps on recurring to me and I pause to think of J at the weirdest times. As I use more and more languages, I’ve become more fascinated by it. Just like Prolog (also one semester, but with a reliable environment.) I want to learn both better.
prezjordan•2mo ago
Shameless plug, feel free to copy my setup! https://github.com/jdan/try-j