Welcome to the summer edition of DYALOGue
As I write this article, summer seems to be on hold – the UK has decided to BREXIT from the EU, the Prime Minister has been replaced and there is a bit of uncertainty (to say the very least) about the economic future in the UK. I am, therefore, very happy to be able to present lots of good news from Dyalog in this issue.
As has become a tradition, the Dyalog Development Team has delivered – once again. I am delighted to say that on June 30 we made Version 15.0 available on ALL supported platforms. Not only is there a lot of new functionality, the new version also contains many performance improvements, and – as the icing on the cake – we have decided to remove the fee for non-commercial licences. Dyalog APL is now completely free on all platforms for educational, personal or non-commercial use! Read about the highlights of Version 15.0 here.
It has truly been an extraordinary spring this year, especially as the number of local user meetings are now increasing, and we make a point of attending all of them. In the Dyalog on the Road article you can get a summary on what events we have attended and what we have presented, in more countries than ever before. This reminds me...if you are planning to organise a local user meeting, or any other event, where you would like Dyalog to attend/present, then I encourage you drop us an e-mail well in advance, so we can get the date(s) in the diary for the relevant Dyalog staff member(s) to attend.
The 8th APL programming contest is well underway, and this year we are happy to see an increase in the number of people who have downloaded the educational licence almost from day one. It may have something to do with the fact that this year we have split the problems into three categories, so it's easier to pick the one you're most inclined to want to solve. Even if you're not a student I encourage you to give it a go – there is also a prize to be had for best solution submitted by a non-student/professional. Read more about the categories, the rules, and how to register etc. here.
The Dyalog team has also grown. Adám Brudzewsky is the newest member of the Dyalog Family and he has joined the Tools Group. Some of you met Adám at Dyalog '15 in Sicily last year, when he was just finding his feet. Since then, he and his family have moved to the UK, and in this issue Adám explains why he is so attracted to APL and Dyalog as a company. The Tools Group has been busy – read all about that here.
Summer in Dyalog terms usually means two things for me – looking forward to a bit of down time to recharge the batteries, and looking forward to the annual user meeting. This year we're meeting in Glasgow – AND THE REGISTRATION SYSTEM IS OPEN – with the Early Bird discount of 10% expiring on 31st July. Register now and make sure you tick the boxes for the workshops you would like to attend. See more in the article here.
During this year's user meeting we will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of APL. After two days of talking mostly about the future of APL, we are going to dedicate much of Wednesday and Thursday of Dyalog '16 to presentations of highlights of the first 50 years of the journey so far. You can read more about our plans for celebrating at Dyalog '16 and the site we are creating to commemorate the first 50 years here.
Fifty years is a long time in the software business, and selecting tools is a tricky business. Our colleagues at MicroAPL have found that the technologies they selected as the foundation for cross-platform development environment and tools for constructing user applications in the APLX product are no longer developed and supported. The effort required to rebuild everything from scratch cannot be justified, so they have decided to withdraw APLX from the market. Dyalog is sad to lose a worthy competitor, but proud to have been invited by MicroAPL to reduce the impact of this decision. We will be doing what we can to help APLX users continue to use APL to solve problems (see here).
If you have not followed all the links and read everything by the time you get to this point, I hope that you enjoy reading the rest of the newsletter! I wish you all a pleasant summer, and I hope to see a record number of you in Glasgow!
Gitte Christensen