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000007_icon-group-sender _Thu Apr 22 10:42:12 1993.msg
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Received: from owl.CS.Arizona.EDU by cheltenham.CS.Arizona.EDU; Thu, 22 Apr 1993 09:13:30 MST
Received: by owl.cs.arizona.edu; Thu, 22 Apr 1993 09:13:30 MST
Message-Id: <9304220942.AA05692@ruls41.LeidenUniv.nl>
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Cc: ruiter@ruls41.LeidenUniv.nl
Subject: popularity of Icon
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 10:42:12 +0100
From: ruiter@ruls41.LeidenUniv.nl
X-Mts: smtp
Status: R
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
Alan D. Corre writes
>
> It seems to me that the reason why Icon isn't a *very* popular language is
> that most of the implementations are non-commercial, so it has not been
> advertised as much as others. If this is true, it is ironic that the fact
> that it is free makes it less, rather than more, popular.
>
Yes, that may be very true. Perhaps one of the ways to make it more
popular is to make it expensive, but nevertheless possible to obtain
for free (like shareware).Then many people will get a kick out of obtaining
Icon without the payment involved.
But, seriously, I wonder what the Icon developers themselves think of this
paradox: a well implemented, platform independent *free* language, a lot
of happy users, and still not popular.
I find it even hard to convince my colleagues of the usefulness of Icon.
I have the distinct feeling that they imagine some nice-try experimental
home-brewn not-quite-finished freak-language. It takes persuasive argueing
to convince them that Icon is a serious language.
In a way, Icon hangs between freeware and shareware, since one needs the
book in order to learn/use Icon. *Really* free languages usually offer
documentation included in electronic format. This makes people frown
when I tell them to buy the book. Of course having to buy a book in order
to use an otherwise completely free language is entirely reasonable, but
not all programmers are.
Hope you people have some comments; I did not intend to offend anyone,
by the way. I just hope that Icon becomes more popular.
Jan de Ruiter
Leiden University
Dept. of Information Science for the Social Sciences
The Netherlands
ruiter@ruls41.leidenuniv.nl