News about Dyalog

Jul 26, 2024

2024 saw the first iteration of a new competition, the APL Forge. The APL Forge is intended as a catalyst to grow the next generation of APL-based applications and tools by inspiring people with good ideas to use APL to turn those ideas into reality.

This annual competition asks individuals, groups, or even companies, to submit their open-source libraries or potential commercial applications/tools for assessment. Each submission can be proprietary or permissively licensed, and open- or closed-sourced, but the core must be written in a currently-supported version of Dyalog (see full eligibility criteria).

The 2024 round of the APL Forge closed in June; the judging process has now completed and Holden Hoover has been named as the winner.

"I am a high school student in Nova Scotia, Canada, and am about to start my final year. My journey with APL began at the age of 12, thanks to an introduction by family friend Robert Bernecky. Since then, APL has been an important tool in my learning journey. It has allowed me to quickly develop concise solutions for many of my classes, especially in Physics and Mathematics. Looking ahead, I plan to pursue a university degree in computer science, where I intend to continue using APL for research and application development. I am particularly interested in exploring the intersection of APL with machine learning.

"I decided to enter the APL Forge when I heard Stine Kromberg talking about it on the Array Cast podcast. I was encouraged by friends to enter, mostly to gain valuable experience and have a motivation, rather than the competition itself.

"I submitted an application called Radar Ingest System. This system is designed to ingest, process, and aggregate raw ADS-B data from multiple antennas. ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) is a radio protocol that allows aircraft to communicate essential data – such as callsign, position, speed, and altitude – with ground stations. My application processes this raw data to create a database of airborne aircraft. This database could then be utilized by other applications, including REST APIs and GUIs, to visualize and display the data effectively. I had been wanting to do this project for a very long time, having tried to do it in JavaScript with no luck; when I was trying to do it that way, I spent more time trying to figure out libraries and minor bugs than programming the actual program! While doing this project, I learned a lot about how to use Conga and Jarvis, but I also improved my fluency in the language."

Holden will present his winning work at Dyalog '24 this September.

Congratulations Holden!