k costs $20,000 per-core (less accurate now than it used to be but I'm pretty sure it's still true for commercial uses). It has a billion-dollar company based entirely around it (Kx/FD) and a smaller multimillion one, so it worked out well, I guess.
J is free, but J has never had an advertising budget, and was only freed recently.
APL's current leading implementation is really bad in comparison to how nice the language used to be, and just as proprietary. It was also significantly nicer to input back when APL keyboards existed and typeballs did as well.
Very few people strike gold and then have the willingness to not sell it at market-rate. Unfortunately, most people implementing APL are very aware of the rate. And it's high.
A language doesn't cost... the environment might. Why did nobody pick up on the ideas? C# is not inspired by K, Go is not, Swift is not, Rust is not, Clojure is not... I mean, take any big or small company that decided "we need a new programming language" - I'm not aware of many taking inspiration from K.
I get it, there are people who love K, and are productive in it. And I'm not even claiming the ideas of K are inherently bad! But you know, when the rest of the world "doesn't get it", _maybe_ the reason is not that the rest of the world is dumb? Articles like this one do K no favor, IMO.. they might "feel good" but they IMO don't prove that K programmers are superior beings who reached enlightenment - they prove the exact opposite, lack of understanding the rest of the world. It's fine to say "I'm quirky and it's fine, this makes me special". It's wrong to say "The rest of the world is quirky, they don't share my niche preferences".
Go was, by the author's own admission, a language for the lowest common denominator (the computer science undergrad). In many ways, the computer science undergrad is less competent than someone with no formal backing at all: it takes less time to teach a new skillset to a blank slate than repair the damage done to undergrads. Rob Pike's hobby is working on an APL interpreter.
C# was Microsoft's answer to Java after getting sued for cloning Java.
Rust is by C++ devs, for C++ devs.
Swift was Apple's successor to Objective-C.
Clojure is another language doing the "Lisp but with a bootstrapped ecosystem" thing, by a guy who had been active in the Java, .net, and CL communities.
All languages build on something, and when the mainstay languages are all ripping off ALGOL-60, ALGOL-60 clone after ALGOL-60 clone is what you will get.
Programming languages are just now starting to become influenced by Prolog despite the benefits of Prolog for certain tasks being apparent; the entire result of the field right now can roughly be traced entirely to UT Austin.
The point of the article was not to claim anything about the superiority of k programmers, it was to point out that the rest of the world was extremely close-minded to anything with different syntax in a comical way, along with demonstrating that a common criticism (of which there are many, 99% of which unfounded, as you can see by checking any thread on Hacker News that even briefly touches upon k or APL) was hypocritical, which I think it did a great job at.
It was a reference to the Kübler-Ross model, which does seem to apply to people who find APL/J/K at some point.
> But you know, when the rest of the world "doesn't get it", _maybe_ the reason is not that the rest of the world is dumb?
Look at the kind of replies you get on every hn thread on APL/J/K - the majority of the negative comments around readability are emotional/gut level responses.
People aren’t trying to understand K examples for a couple of hours and failing... they are making snap judgements based on their experiences in other languages.
J is free, but J has never had an advertising budget, and was only freed recently.
APL's current leading implementation is really bad in comparison to how nice the language used to be, and just as proprietary. It was also significantly nicer to input back when APL keyboards existed and typeballs did as well.
Very few people strike gold and then have the willingness to not sell it at market-rate. Unfortunately, most people implementing APL are very aware of the rate. And it's high.