The elements of SETL style.
Robert Dewar, Edmond Schonberg · 1979
Associated with every programming language is a style of programming which is encouraged by the semantic and syntactic features of this language. We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a FORTRAN programmer approaching APL for the first time and writing correct APL programs which are nevertheless emphatically criticized for not displaying the proper APL style. Indeed we may consider this 'APL style' to be the most important contribution of the language to the art of programming, rather than the specific language features out of which this style emerges. Controversies about the value of APL (and other programming languages) focus precisely around this issue of style. It is also around this issue that we want to center our presentation of SETL.