Devine Lu Linvega

The APL Vade Mecum

"These cards were kind of a novelty item, something Iverson could hand out at conferences. He created these woodblocks that had the entire #APL language specification on it. You could, in theory, refer to these unique business cards to understand how APL works."

https://www.uvic.ca/library/about-us/news-stories/news/voices-uvic-libraries/durno-historic-computing-lab.php
Thanks @jdd

May 9 at 6:41pmWeb
Show threadPypeBros6d ago
@neauoire @jdd wait ... do you mean monad things that are everywhere in Haskell draw their roots to APL ?
Show threadDevine Lu Linvega6d ago
@PypeBros @jdd monadic in APL just means the operand mode taking a single argument.
Show threadDavid JONES6d ago
@neauoire @jdd I'm a bit confused by this article. Did Iverson cut woodblocks with reproductions of Futura/Spartan fonts for the heading and Courier for the body? I doubt it. Did he cut type-sized blocks for the cute APL symbols (or direct the art)? Seems more likely. Then you could letterpress print the cards.
Although cutting individual pieces of type would be quite fiddly. I wonder if he used a fancy CNC pantograph cutter that maybe IBM had.
The article doesn't show the wooden blocks, or doesn't seem to.
Show threadmonome5d ago

@drj had the same thought the moment they mentioned “cutting”. Yet, those cards are indeed amazing.

I preserve some for diagnostic algorithms, as they used to call them, from my mother, she is a doctor. Same use, different fields.

Show threadKonrad Hinsen5d ago
@neauoire @jdd I found one of these cards in the IBM APL manual as a bookmark, when I got curious about APL in 1982 after discovering a terminal with an APL keyboard in my high school. The manual was better for learning, but I kept the card next to the keyboard as a reference.