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000008_icon-group-sender _Thu Apr 22 06:23:02 1993.msg
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Received: from owl.CS.Arizona.EDU by cheltenham.CS.Arizona.EDU; Thu, 22 Apr 1993 09:13:35 MST
Received: by owl.cs.arizona.edu; Thu, 22 Apr 1993 09:13:35 MST
Date: 22 Apr 1993 06:23:02 -0600 (CST)
From: Chris Tenaglia - 257-8765 <TENAGLIA@mis.mcw.edu>
Subject: Re: runtime debugger
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Message-Id: <01GXAUZOLQ368WW2JD@mis.mcw.edu>
Organization: Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI)
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> In article <9304190901.AA04075@ruls41.LeidenUniv.nl> ruiter@ruls41.LeidenUniv.nl writes:
> >I still don't understand why Icon isn't a *very* popular
> >language, >----------------------------------------------------
> >Jan de Ruiter
> >Leiden University
> >Dept. of Information Science for the Social Sciences
> >The Netherlands
> >ruiter@ruls41.leidenuniv.nl
> 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.
> --
> Alan D. Corre
> Department of Hebrew Studies
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (414) 229-4245
> PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201 corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
I think it may due to several additional factors too. First, it seems to
me that the main computers languages taught (sanctioned) by education are
C, COBOL, and BASIC. Others like LISP, ADA, and others are picked up in
order to accomplish something else. ICON also has kind of a funny name.
Sometimes the name of something is sufficient to market it. WordPerfect
might have been a good name for a string language ;-), but I guess that's
hindsight. Another is resistance to change. When I put it on our VAX the
first question management asked is "so who knows this language?", "who's
going to support this when you're sick or vacationing?". I mentioned that
it's easy to learn, and the book and docs are on the shelf. But a crew of
COBOLers on VAX and FOXPROs on PCs are self sufficient in their toolsets
and not really interested in learning yet another language. Maybe I am
too, since I haven't haven't played much with the COBOL, FORTRAN, FOCUS,
INGRES, or SPSS which I have access too either. I can't much beyond
printf("\nHello\n"); in C (but I download and build other peoples' C ware).
Now that ICON is getting into X and OOP I think it has a chance to catch
on more.
Chris Tenaglia (System Manager) | Medical College of Wisconsin
8701 W. Watertown Plank Rd. | Milwaukee, WI 53226
(414)257-8765 | tenaglia@mis.mcw.edu, mcwmis!tenaglia