J programming language
Shares rank 105 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
Free array programming language that people praise for its brevity once they get past conventional syntax. Critics find its symbol-heavy syntax hard to read.
Free array programming language that people praise for its brevity once they get past conventional syntax. Critics find its symbol-heavy syntax hard to read.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fans of array languages
“I like APL/J/Uiua, so this is perfect.”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “Cagire: Live Coding in Forth” “my favorite PL which is J”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “A Road to Lisp: Why Lisp”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard-to-read symbol-heavy syntax
“If the weird syntax of APL and J bothers you”
Comment from 16 May 2026 in “Accelerate” “more suggestive and legible to me than J's emphasis on digraphs and forks”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Array-programming the Mandelbrot set” “it's a hack to port APL to ASCII”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Saying Goodbye to one line of APL”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
11 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I like APL/J/Uiua, so this is perfect.”
“my favorite PL which is J”
“refreshingly simple and effective once you manage to overcome indoctrination you received since elementary school”
“A malleable coding agent app.”
“If you don't like the symbols and want something open-source, then J is a strong option”
“If the weird syntax of APL and J bothers you”
“it's a hack to port APL to ASCII”
“In J, it's 20 characters.”
“I wrote my first parser generator in J.”
“more suggestive and legible to me than J's emphasis on digraphs and forks”
“I can't really imagine trying to work on a large (even just thousands of lines, let alone larger) project in them”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.