Discovering APL: Difference between revisions
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Miraheze>Adám Brudzewsky |
Miraheze>Adám Brudzewsky |
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In the 1980s and 1990s the interest of an increasingly professionalised IT community shifted to problems (writing GUIs, and formal methods for developing software) to which APLs had little to contribute. Formal software development methods especially deprecated the use of APLs, by distinguishing analysis, design, programming and testing as separate activities and embedding them in elaborate ‘methodologies’. Programming represents such a small fraction of these ventures that no plausible improvement in programmer productivity could justify the high skill levels associated with APL. | In the 1980s and 1990s the interest of an increasingly professionalised IT community shifted to problems (writing GUIs, and formal methods for developing software) to which APLs had little to contribute. Formal software development methods especially deprecated the use of APLs, by distinguishing analysis, design, programming and testing as separate activities and embedding them in elaborate ‘methodologies’. Programming represents such a small fraction of these ventures that no plausible improvement in programmer productivity could justify the high skill levels associated with APL. | ||
Despite extraordinary proven productivity, APL was dropped from company after company, largely on theoretical grounds that argued for compliance with IT strategies. Until the advent of | Despite extraordinary proven productivity, APL was dropped from company after company, largely on theoretical grounds that argued for compliance with IT strategies. Until the advent of [http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ Extreme Programming] (XP) and the [http://www.agilealliance.org/home Agile Alliance], few saw that programming is a design activity, and analysis often best done iteratively. In this period the APLs flourished only where results consistently outweighed IT theory, for example, in investment bank trading rooms. | ||
As support now ebbs generally from the Software Engineering movement, the APLs remain the sharpest tool in the box, with a strong tradition of agile development. | As support now ebbs generally from the Software Engineering movement, the APLs remain the sharpest tool in the box, with a strong tradition of agile development. | ||