Peter joined Dyalog Ltd in mid-July 2022, shortly after finishing his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Aalborg University in Denmark. He didn’t originally plan to look for a job so soon, but when he saw that Dyalog Ltd had an opening involving three of his favorite things (C programming, interpreters, and APL) it was too good an opportunity to let pass and he was offered the job after a couple of online calls and interviews. Peter and his girlfriend had planned to move to Esbjeg in the south-west of Denmark for a while, so he thought it was great that Dyalog Ltd made it possible to work from home. He joined just in time to be able to participate in Dyalog ’22, which meant that he met lots of customers, which he considered a great experience.

His interest in APL started while he was at university – at one point he thought to himself: “This language looks so strange and different that it might be worth learning.” After spending some time playing around with it and participating in the 2021 APL Problem Solving Competition, he started writing his own little APL interpreter, which he says must have been the point of no return for him. Even in the first few months at Dyalog Ltd, he has learned a great deal about the language and its quirks, and a lot about implementation techniques.

Peter hopes to be able to help develop the language in the years to come, and to make sure dfns get the love they deserve, as he thinks that functional programming is definitely the way to go!

Even though he is part of the “young generation” of APLers, writing long trains and doing code golfing in APL has yet to catch his interest.

When not working, Peter is likely to be found taking a long walk, or trying out something computer science related that has caught his interest. Often, the code he writes in his free time is for the Plan 9 operating system, which in his mind is so elegant and simple that it is almost a shame it has so few users.

As is often the case these days, Silas found APL through online programming language discussions – both in various forums and through videos (Aaron Hsu’s Co-dfns and John Scholes’ Game of Life demonstatration in particular) – whilst attempting to understand the more esoteric ideas and their theoretical underpinnings provided by Scheme and other functional languages. After discovering APL, Silas attempted to use it for his Data Analysis coursework, sticking primarily to a small set of primatives. However, hitting WSFULLs with the datasets required meant that APL remained just a fun system to play with, which led to an understanding of where (⍸) in terms of other primatives (⍳ and ⍴).

Silas saw one of Dyalog Ltd’s adverts for a C programmer; this was a language he had learnt during his exploration of the Raspberry Pi and its associated add-on boards, so he applied. He joined Dyalog Ltd in June 2022 after graduating from Royal Holloway in England with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, and eased his way into exploring the internal workings of the interpreter, where he now spends most of his time.

When not programmaing, Silas can be found enjoying a good book and the occasional summer hike with friends and family.

Karta joined Dyalog in April, and is yet to meet anybody in person although he’s been told that this is not necessarily a bad thing! After completing his doctoral degree in theoretical physics, Karta stumbled upon Dyalog and APL entirely by happenstance. Being often captivated by things that look unfamiliar to him, and having an interest in most things, it was a code golf question that was answered in a strange, yet mathematical-looking language that took him to the profile of the poster, who happened to mention they were employed by Dyalog and currently hiring. He sent an email enquiring about the opportunity and, several remote interviews later, was happy to be hired as a C/C++ developer working on the interpreter.

Karta is one of the few members of the team that knew no APL whatsoever before joining and has been very impressed by Dyalog and APL thus far; he is very much looking forward to seeing how far the language can be taken, with an eye to further developing and potentially encouraging its use in academia and other technical fields of study.

In his spare time, Karta enjoys expanding his knowledge of both scientific and technical pursuits, and tinkering around with software and hardware systems, amongst his eclectic interests. When not found reading papers or learning an unfamiliar branch of mathematics, he will be caught thinking of a new engineering project to occupy his time, or stumbling through learning a new language, or maybe just delighting in the latest vixra paper.

The story of how Rodrigo got his first internship at Dyalog is, in his opinion, a textbook example of serendipity. As 2020 started, Rodrigo began actively participating in an online code golf community, where people try to solve programming challenges in as few bytes of code as possible. Whilst his golfing skills were possibly lacking, the challenges he posted were usually well accepted. Posting many challenges meant Rodrigo got exposed to answers in all sorts of programming languages, from C, Java, Python and JavaScript, to Jelly, 05AB1E, Husk…and APL. Because of the context and the aspect of it, Rodrigo first thought APL was one of those “esolangs” and not a serious programming language.

Rodrigo’s fascination with APL led him to start frequenting The APL Orchard chatroom, where a small number of brilliant people convened to discuss all things APL. Here he met Adám Brudzewsky, who was keen on teaching APL to newcomers, and so began Rodrigo’s journey to learn APL.

His interest in APL kept growing, and he found it to be a simple and expressive language that also incorporated his affinity with mathematics. One day, while lurking in The APL Orchard, Adám asked Rodrigo if he would be interested in taking an intern position at Dyalog…a few emails later it was established that Rodrigo would work as a part-time intern at Dyalog during the Summer of 2020. This enabled Dyalog to make the most of Rodrigo’s skills in teaching and technical writing, and meant Rodrigo could indulge his passion for sharing knowledge about mathematics and programming while still finishing his MSc in Applied Mathematics. After his internship, Rodrigo took some time to complete his MSc thesis before returning to Dyalog to finish what he had started and hopefully to take part in many other interesting projects. When he is not working for Dyalog, Rodrigo may be found leading a Portuguese APL meetup, writing a blog post for his website (mathspp.com), or maybe leading a workshop or course. Other than working, Rodrigo likes to spend time with his loved ones, read fantasy books, eat chocolate, and watch silly comedy movies.

Ron Murray is a recent addition to the Dyalog team, with a long history in the APL community. He first encountered APL/360 in 1969 and was hooked. He used it as the basis for teaching Computer Science courses for the Hampton, Virginia High Schools. Then, working with other APL pioneers, he wrote several APL applications and contributed to five different APL implementations at The Computer Company, STSC, Burroughs, Data Resources, and Analogic Corporation.

From 1986 until 2019 he left the world of APL to develop software on Microcomputers for Microsoft and Amazon, where he contributed to various development projects for Windows, OS/2, NT, Visual Basic, Encarta, and a variety of projects within the Microsoft Research Division as well the Developer Relations Group. He also contributed to the scalability and reliability of the Amazon transaction accounting system and the Windows Azure Archival Storage System.

He also ran an Aviation business for several years at the Tacoma Narrows airport, and started an internet television company with three friends. Together they learned a lot about crawling the web using machine learning, categorizing videos by their subject matters and quality, as well as constructing interactive user interfaces on IOS devices.

During all that non-APL work he continued to use APL as a tool of thought for organizing, analyzing, and clarifying the work that needed to be done.

Since July of 2020 he’s been applying the many non-APL things he’s learned to help extend and improve the Dyalog APL systems and their interactions with the rest of the computing world.

He points out that Windows 95, which is now 25 years old is about half as old as the APL/360 release!