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| author | Marshall Lochbaum <mwlochbaum@gmail.com> | 2020-12-02 14:45:59 -0500 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Marshall Lochbaum <mwlochbaum@gmail.com> | 2020-12-02 15:06:12 -0500 |
| commit | 55c40e75dde0ddad39a305f29e036ec88c85babe (patch) | |
| tree | 3475a3c3e600227468828c507a241763e58f2085 /doc/context.md | |
| parent | 1b8aab1ebfc36888d58d5347f7723e4bd1c5031c (diff) | |
Move problems.md to commentary folder
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/context.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/context.md | 2 |
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/doc/context.md b/doc/context.md index bf2183bb..516a5f18 100644 --- a/doc/context.md +++ b/doc/context.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Here, the lowercase spelling indicates that `a` and `e` are to be treated as sub ## Is grammatical context really a problem? -Yes, in the sense of [problems with BQN](../problems.md). A grammar that uses context is harder for humans to read and machines to execute. A particular difficulty is that parts of an expression you don't yet understand can interfere with parts you do, making it difficult to work through an unknown codebase. +Yes, in the sense of [problems with BQN](../commentary/problems.md). A grammar that uses context is harder for humans to read and machines to execute. A particular difficulty is that parts of an expression you don't yet understand can interfere with parts you do, making it difficult to work through an unknown codebase. One difficulty beginners to APL will encounter is that code in APL at first appears like a string of undifferentiated symbols. For example, a tacit Unique Mask implementation `⍳⍨=⍳∘≢` consists of six largely unfamiliar characters with little to distinguish them (in fact, the one obvious bit of structure, the repeated `⍳`, is misleading as it means different things in each case!). Simply placing parentheses into the expression, like `(⍳⍨)=(⍳∘≢)`, can be a great help to a beginner, and part of learning APL is to naturally see where the parentheses should go. The equivalent BQN expression, `⊐˜=↕∘≠`, will likely appear equally intimidating at first, but the path to learning which things apply to which is much shorter: rather than learning the entire list of APL primitives, a beginner just needs to know that superscript characters like `˜` are 1-modifiers and characters like `∘` with unbroken circles are 2-modifiers before beginning to learn the BQN grammar that will explain how to tie the various parts together. |
