APL — A tool for personalized computing

Abstract

APL systems have been in operation for many years now. Their user populations have grown and continue to grow at a high rate. The kind of work done in APL is of great variety ranging from running batch-type applications and teaching to personalized computer usage in problem solving environments. Equally varied are the types of users encompassing secretaries, clerks, engineers, planners, scientists.

In this paper we shall focus on personalized computing. We define what we mean by that. We formulate a set of requirements for a tool for personalized computing. They include

• Uniform environment,

• Interactive usage,

• Uniform syntax of the language,

• Adequacy of means to solve a given problem,

• Minimal education prerequisite,

• Lern-as-you-go effect,

• Support of application language definitions,

• Full function to cope with evolving user's knowledge and requirements,

• Access to data bases.

By a number of examples we show how APL meets these requirements. We discuss the notions of structured design and structured programming as they are applied in APL.