Summary of everything we know about kOS
9 points by veqq
9 points by veqq
Also: https://aplwiki.com/wiki/KOS
The K code looks like mumps. It’s fascinating but inscrutable.
It’s fascinating
Of all the language I’ve learned in the past 20-25 years, none has caused me to question what I believe about programming more than k.
How did you learn it? Is there anything like an introductory explanation? I watched the youtube video and the Geo guy was explaining some of the basics. But it was no way to learn. Is this one of those things where nobody is going to help you, and you’ve got to unpack it yourself? That’s probably appropriate for something this esoteric.
(edit) It looks like K the language is a little better socialized than this kOS operating system. http://learn-k.com/
There was a lot of trial and error with friends, but since some good resources have come online:
I also consulted the simple help of ngnk (the commands \h, \+, \', \:) quite often. The biggest block came from the paradigm: it’s initially very difficult (at least it was for me) to conceive a solution to a problem as transformations of arrays.
Have you looked at J? Is the experience significantly different for you? It has much more learning material for @JohnDeHope
I did, but k clicks more with me than j does. Not that j is bad, but I just find k more compelling: it’s a simpler language (e.g., using nested lists avoids the need to have operators to act on specific axes and rank) and its core operators are more CS-oriented than math-oriented.
Very interesting! Someone recently said K pushes ASCII to its full potential, J goes too far so it’s hard to read and confusing. It’s very interesting how Iverson’s preferred box model didn’t gain adoption.
Only enough to know that J is in the same family of array languages. I’ve never been able to understand them well enough to do even trivial programming challenges with them.
Starting with K makes little sense. Both J and APL have a lot of excellent material for learners and were used even to teach middle-schoolers basic mathematics. The core has about 40 symbols and can be picked up quite quickly. People can and will gladly help you, too! The problem with K is that it’s an expensive industry tool (like hundreds of thousands of dollars for a kdb+ license) besides hobby implementations of 20 year old versions.