I used K professionally for a bit. The people who love it dearly love it, and it is exceptionally great for any type of linear algebra or relational database problem. One of the interesting insights I was made aware of: in K, the slowest operation is usually no more than an order of magnitude slower than the fastest. Since all of the operators are 'approximately the same speed' it's much easier to reason about a program's performance. It's also the reason K programmers obsess over the character length of a solution, often the shorter solution is the faster one.
On the downside, I found K to be very polarizing with respect to interoperability. There is a K way to do something and 'the other ways,' and attempting to bridge the gap leads to a lot of headaches. Part of it is that K is so good 'inside' that not as much effort is given to interacting outside of that world. The K programmers I know are aware of this, and I think this is more of a critique on the size of the community rather than its mindset. They're focused on solving actual problems rather than the gardening involved to keep the language friendly.
One nice thing is that K programmers tend to be higher up on the intelligence side of things[1], so if you meet someone who knows it you're probably in for a great conversation.
Comments
I used K professionally for a bit. The people who love it dearly love it, and it is exceptionally great for any type of linear algebra or relational database problem. One of the interesting insights I was made aware of: in K, the slowest operation is usually no more than an order of magnitude slower than the fastest. Since all of the operators are 'approximately the same speed' it's much easier to reason about a program's performance. It's also the reason K programmers obsess over the character length of a solution, often the shorter solution is the faster one.
On the downside, I found K to be very polarizing with respect to interoperability. There is a K way to do something and 'the other ways,' and attempting to bridge the gap leads to a lot of headaches. Part of it is that K is so good 'inside' that not as much effort is given to interacting outside of that world. The K programmers I know are aware of this, and I think this is more of a critique on the size of the community rather than its mindset. They're focused on solving actual problems rather than the gardening involved to keep the language friendly.
One nice thing is that K programmers tend to be higher up on the intelligence side of things[1], so if you meet someone who knows it you're probably in for a great conversation.
[1] like look at this crazy shit http://www.nsl.com/k/ray/ray.k