News about Dyalog

May 29, 2010

Dyalog is extremely proud to announce that Mastering Dyalog APL is now available for sale at Amazon

This book is a complete guide to the use of Dyalog APL, beginning with a thorough introduction to the APL programming language. Following this, the tutorial describes a large number of common coding techniques, and discusses a variety of interfaces, including file handling and COM/OLE. The author provides a comprehensive introduction to developing Graphical User Interfaces in Dyalog APL and wraps up with an overview of the publishing tool NewLeaf and the RainPro graphics engine, two of the powerful tools that are included with Dyalog APL.

The book is specifically aimed at helping new users get started with Dyalog APL and advancing them to a point where they can produce working solutions by expressing ideas directly in APL. Step by step, this book gives the reader a thorough grounding in the philosophy of the APL language and the many examples illustrate the practical capabilities of this dynamic software development environment. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises through which beginners and advanced readers can test their skills as they progress through the course. Solutions with detailed explanations are given in the last chapter. The exercises and examples are supplemented by a set of companion files containing sample programs and data, which can be downloaded from the Dyalog web site here.

Although the book is primarily aimed at new developers and is suitable for students with no prior programming experience, most chapters end with a "Specialist’s Section", containing tips and tricks that will be of interest to readers who do have experience with programming – and some prior knowledge of APL.

Bernard Legrand has previously authored a number of text books on APL and Dyalog is proud to be able to present the result of our collaboration. The result is a completely modern, up-to-date textbook, suitable for new and experienced APL users of all ages.

We have decided to make a printed first edition of the book mainly because Bernard has made good use of colours for highlighting throughout the text and his humorous illustrations also deserve to be enjoyed in colour.

Given its size and circulation, the book is very inexpensive owing to the sponsorship of Dyalog and SimCorp A/S, which we hope will make it as widely available as possible. The book is available for purchase on Amazon, but it is also available as a PDF download – free of charge here.

We hope that many of you will make good use of the book to train the next generation of APL'ers and, naturally, enjoy reading it yourself.

Click here to go to the Amazon website