Defending the ternary operator

[Andrew Koenig]

>> Once you do know what they mean, APL programs are often much easier
>> to understand than their counterparts in other languages.

Laura> Then you go away for six months and code in some other language.
Laura> And then you get a bug report. You look at your code and no longer
Laura> remember what the heck it was that you were trying to do.  

In 1976 I wrote an entire student-registration system in APL.
In 1977, not having looked at the code for a year, I was brought
back to make some major changes to it.

I had no trouble understanding what the code was doing.

>From that experience, I can say confidently that APL's lack of
data-abstraction facilities is a much more bigger problem than its
brevity.

Incidentally, that code was still in use when I checked back 15 years
later.