Out-of-control structures

ABSTRACT

The proponents of Control Structures¹ claimed that adding them to APL² would improve both the organizational structure and the readability of APL code, but in my experience this has not occurred. Instead, I find previous obstacles to readability have often simply been supplanted by different obstacles and prior forms of structural awkwardness by new architectural excesses.It appears to me that some of these changes³ represent a loss of "APL-ness" in coding style, specifically those characteristics of conciseness, modularity, and linearity.This paper discusses specific changes in style and the difficulties I feel they create, and then presents various proposals for improving the situation. The ideas presented are illustrated with examples taken from actual code written by professional APL programmers.⁴