APL Level Languages in Analysis
J. Adin Mann, Robert V. Edwards, THOMAS GALL, H. Michael Cheung, F. E. Coffield, C. HAVENS, P. WAGNER · ACS symposium series · 1977
So far as we know this is the first report in the open literature of a laboratory experiment instrumented totally within the context of APL as the computer language driving each level of a hierarchy. The significance of our report is the demonstration that such a high level language improves by orders of magnitude the effort required to implement complicated experiments involving elements of control, data acquisition, data processing, and modelling of complex phenomena. It is especially easy to retain the degree of human interaction required by the experiment. All of these desirable results can be accomplished by persons with no formal training in computer science. Certainly other languages and combination of languages have been used to write interactive systems for data collection and analysis. We have had considerable experience with FORTRAN and BASIC as well as assembly languages. Our experience with operating systems for experimental work has been limited