[mlajtos]

You are exactly right that the original vision of APL was a handwritten, non-ambiguous, consistent, and executable math notation. This was never accomplished.

In 2021, I made a prototype calculator designed for iPad and Pencil and wrote four essays called "New Kind of Paper" describing this concept. The video demonstration of the prototype [Demo] sums up pretty well how it might be used.

In 2024, Apple released Math Notes, which implements this concept for standard math notation. My "review" of it is at [MathNotes]. In short, it is currently a preview of a damn great tool, but its future depends on notation and expressivity.

APL is a language from 2066, created in 1966. While its semantics make more sense now due to machine learning, syntactically it remains alien to most people. Backus' FP/FL and Iverson's J are more approachable to current programmers, but still not there. In New Kind of Paper, I created a tiny language called Fluent, which is nowhere near the ambition of any language mentioned, but it is intentionally designed to be handwritten. A week ago, I open-sourced it. [Fluent]

There is plenty of work left to do, but it is a good start.

[NKoP]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper

[MathNotes]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-5

[Fluent]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649223

[Demo]: https://youtu.be/y5Tpp_y2TBk

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.