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000090_icon-group-sender _Wed Apr 20 10:00:14 1994.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Wed, 20 Apr 1994 12:45:53 MST
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 1994 10:00:14 -0700
From: Michael Shafto <shafto@eos.arc.nasa.gov>
Message-Id: <199404201700.KAA11036@eos.arc.nasa.gov>
To: SREA@UAEX.ARKNET.EDU, icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Subject: Re: Snobol4 or Icon?
Cc: shafto@eos.arc.nasa.gov
Status: R
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
Steve,
I have been a SNOBOL4 hacker for almost 25 years,
having learned it on an IBM 360 at Princeton,
starting in 1970.
I picked up Icon starting in about 1982, before
it was widely available on a lot of platforms.
I've used Icon extensively since about 1984, on
Vax, PC, and Mac platforms.
The following opinions are likely NOT to be
politically correct, but they're based on a lot
of practical programming experience.
1. Icon would probably be easier to learn from
scratch than would SNOBOL4, but this is irrelevant
if you're already fluent in SNOBOL4.
1a) However, if others have to read and
understand your code, Icon beats SNOBOL4.
2. If your applications are heavy on pattern
matching, SNOBOL4 is far better than Icon.
2a) If your applications are NOT heavily
dependent on sophistiacted pattern matching,
Icon is better.
3. SNOBOL4's advantages decrease the larger
your programs become. Icon is mcuh better if
you have to develop and maintain large programs,
using libraries.
4. Icon is better maintained than SNOBOL4, e.g.,
Ralph Griswold and friends are about to deliver
on a major investment in the enhancement of
Icon's graphics programming capabilities.
5. Both Icon code and SNOBOL4 code are highly
portable across different platforms; this is
a real strength for both of them.
6. There are two things you can do in SNOBOL4
that you simply cannot do in Icon:
(a) have patterns availble as first-class
data types: create them at run-time, have them
returned as values from subroutines, etc.;
(b) create, compile, and interpret code
at run-time (like LISP).
If these features are important, you should
use SNOBOL4.
Happy hacking!!!
(Icon and SNOBOL4 are my two favorite languages;
I know lots of others but I don't use them.)
Mike