"04 - The Wizardry Consulted (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Rick)

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was . . ."

"Yep," Jerry said proudly. "APL."

Wiz groaned.

"Hey, you're a fine one to complain. Who wrote the first spell interpreter
in a hacked-up version of Forth?"

"That was different," Wiz said with some dignity. "Forth was exceptionally
well suited to what I needed to do."

"So is this," Jerry informed him. "APL is an extremely elegant language.
You can express a whole series of complex mathematical operations in a
single line of code simply, unambiguously and logically."

Wiz tore his eyes away from the mess above Jerry's desk and poured himself
another mug of blackmoss tea. "If you've got a computer that can produce
hieroglyphics and if you never need to remember what you did."

"Nonsense. It's no harder to write understandable code in APL than
anything else. You can even write incomprehensible code in C."

"I rest my case."

Before Jerry could reply the door banged open and Danny limped in.

"How's the back?" Wiz asked, grateful for a respite from what promised to
be a full-scale language debate.

"Getting better," the young programmer said, plopping himself down in his
chair. He leaned forward almost forty-five degrees. "See? No pain."

Considering the extent of his injuries, Danny was lucky to be alive, much
less walking around. A blast from a guard's weapon had nearly burned him
in half during the great battle for Caermort almost three years before.
Magic had saved him and magic had healed him, but not even the world's
most skillful healers could restore him fully in safety. So for months he
had been going to the healers in the Wizard's Keep for a combination of
physical therapy, massage and healing magic. Gradually but steadily he was
improving.

The third member of the software development team was several years
younger with fresh good looks that made him look younger still. Even
before his ordeal he had been slender, but the rigors of his recovery had
taken flesh off his bones until he was positively skinny, despite the best
efforts of his wife June and the castle cooks to feed him up.

He looked over at the characters above Jerry's desk. "What's that?" he