Talk:K (programming language)

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Is http://www.schneier.com/code/sol.k in this "K programming language"?


yes.


Contents

[edit] NPOV

I'm missing NPOV here. Seems like this entry was written by the language designer, or (more likely) somebody who's using the language and a bit too fond of it.

Nothing wrong with that in itself, but not very informative - if somebody says "combines the best of foo, bar, and baz", I still don't know *which* features of foo, bar, and baz went into the language.

<rant> The section on the Hello World program is entirely misguided. Nobody is interested in how easy it is to write a Hello World program (except those who're learning the language, and the interest persists only until the program runs).</rant> (Sorry for ranting, but the section really deserves it. IMHO.)

Joachim Durchholz

I like the Hello World program because it can give you an immediate sense of the language. A comparison of the K example with a comparable example from Java is representative of the differences between the two language in general. However I certainly agree that you need additional examples. I've added a word sort and prime number examples since they were the two examples used in the APL section. If you want a different example or additional ones say something and I should be able to help.

Abcarter 13:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Out of date?

I followed the kuro5hin discussion, and looked at the Kx Systems website, but failed to find any information about how to get hold of K.

Along the way I found K Links put up by the other of the kuro5hin article, and "No Stinking Loops", a collection of links for various APL-derived languages; interpreting the latter my best guess is that versions 2 and 3 of K are obsolete and version 4 is now called "Q".

The link to "K4/Q" throws you into a directory which appears to contain libraries for the Q runtime, but there isn't much in the way of documentation there to tell you what to do with them.

Maybe this will help someone work out how to improve the current article ... Hv 02:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free?

Anyone found any evidence that K is free for free software? I've gotten nothing but rude responses from their sales people.. note I said sales. :) 216.199.93.178 20:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It use to be the case that you could download a demo version of K from the Kx website. However, in 2003 Kx systems released Q which is merges the features of K and Ksql and is meant to be the successor to both. At some point they deleted the K download since it is no longer a featured language; however they did not add a Q download. Kx still offers trial versions of Q, but it is on a by request basis. Abcarter 15:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

You can download an older version of K for linux from http://cs.nyu.edu/cs/faculty/shasha/papers/klinux. Other version are referenced in http://www.cs.nyu.edu/shasha/papers/cousins.html. I hope Kx Systems would consider once again providing official access, but without any support, to the last version of K prior to Q as this is an excellent language. Bakul Shah 18:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

A correction and a comment. I had thought that Q was the successor to both ksql and k. It is the successor to ksql and it does merge the features of ksql and k, however it is still written entirely in k, though a newer version. It would be nice for Kx to offer older versions of k without support, but it's not clear that it is in their interest to do so. Abcarter 00:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merge with KDB

Unless there are objections I will begin the process of merging the entry on KDB (database) with K (programming language). This is based on discussions on the KDB entry. This is based on the close linkage between the language and the database:

  1. Both KDB and KDB+ are developed in K
  2. Ksql and Q, the query languages for KDB and KDB+, respectively, are written in K.
  3. With a few minor exceptions in academia no, the K language is always used in conjunction with KDB.

Abcarter 23:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Merged the KDB (database) and did a very rough clean up. I deleted anything that was more marketing than factual. I'm embarrassed to say that there is really very little left as a result. I will expand on this in the next couple of weeks. Abcarter 01:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on changes

I'll be making numerous changes to the K entry in the next few weeks and using this section for comments when necessary. Abcarter 11:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Made some corrections to the infobox.

  1. The Kx site lists 1993 as the year when k was first developed.
  2. KDB+ is not an implementation of k but an application built on top of it.
  3. k is written in c but its design is not influenced by c in any obvious way.
  4. Apparently Scheme was the specific dialect of Lisp that influenced Arthur Whitney in the design of k

Abcarter 11:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 65.254.63.193

Your remarks on performance characteristics is great stuff. I'm not too sure if I follow it completely, any change of providing a source that one could read for more detail? Also, do you have any objective sources giving performance benchmarks or numbers? Abcarter 00:42, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

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