Learning resources

"I have long been struck by the contrast between the success with which the adventurous learn APL by simply using it, and the frequent failure of lecture courses to communicate the simplicity and applicability of the language." Ken Iverson. A Working Introduction to APL, 1981.

For non-programmers

Some of the best resources for somebody new to APL and programming in general are:

• The Learn tab on TryAPL
• The book Mastering Dyalog APL by Bernard Legrand
• The APL Cultivation Stack Exchange Lessons
• The Zark APL Tutor

Follow one or a couple of these tutorials through and play around a bit. To learn APL the advice is similar to that for learning other languages: have a goal (something you want to accomplish) and try to do it. Along the way you are sure to come across the pitfalls and gotchas of the language, and with time you may come to understand what APL thinking means.

If you get stuck, don't hesitate to ask your questions in the APL Orchard chat room.

For non-APL programmers

This is a list of tutorials and other resources of interest to someone who knows about programming or is familiar with another programming language, but wants to learn more about APL.

• APL Cultivation (chat lessons)
• TryAPL online interpreter with lessons
• Learn X in Y minutes
• Fear and Loathing with APL
• APL in 20 Minutes
• A Short Intro to APL
• Let's Learn A Programming Language
• APLWiki list of Books and Publications
• Mastering Dyalog APL
• GitHub repository
• Zark tutorial
• Trying APL
• Artificial Neural Networks
• FizzBuzz

For novice APLers

If you already have a fair grasp of APL's primitive functions and operators, you can sharpen your skills by challenging yourself with these:

• Crosswords: Fill in APL expressions and snippets to fulfil all the clues.

• 2016 Year Game: Find APL expressions involving exactly the digits 2 0 1 6 in that order to equal the numbers 0 to 100.

• 2017 Code Golf Challenge: Find the shortest possible APL expression that evaluates 1…52 without using any number or character literals.

• APL Problem Solving Competitions — Try to solve past years' problems.

For old APLers

In the last decade, several implementations have extended APL with new primitives:

Functions

• ⊢ Same, Right
• ⊣ Same, Left
• ⌷ Materialise, Index
• ≡ Depth, Match
• ≢ Tally, Not Match
• ⍸ Where, Interval Index
• ⊆ Nest, Partition

Operators

• ∘ Bind, Compose
• ⍤ Rank
• ⌸ Key
• ⌺ Stencil
• ⍠ Variant

Lambdas

• Intro
• Details
• Operators

Tacit programming

Dyalog APL documentation:: Intro ∙ Details Videos: Short ∙ Long

Other features

• Keywords
• Object oriented programming

How to's for advanced APLers

• Error trapping with Dyalog APL

• Error trapping in Dyalog APL forms

• Calling APL from other languages

• Calling other languages from APL

• Performance tuning

• APL on the web

• Parallel computing

• Cryptography ← Migrate https://aplwiki.com/CryptographyWithDyalogAndDotNet