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000024_icon-group-sender _Wed May 24 11:40:00 1995.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Wed, 24 May 1995 11:01:40 MST
Message-Id: <9505241140.AA03879@ns1.computek.net>
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Date: Wed, 24 May 95 11:40 CDT
From: gep2@computek.net
Subject: Re: icon notes [Re: Is there such a language...]
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.14
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
>I agree that Icon can run circles around C and similar languages. And I'm
all for working smarter and charging higher rates for my time. :-)
>But...
Does the Icon compiler produce native (machine) code? Execution
performance is still an issue for many, although I agree that it
is becoming *less* of an issue.
It all really depends on what kind of a program you're going to write. Some
programs will only [finally] run ONCE, or at least very infrequently: a good
example is a SNOBOL4+ program I'm writing at the moment which will take a large
series of Excel spreadsheets (almost 5300 cells) and cross-compile it into a
source program in the PCBUS programming language (so it can be more tightly
integrated into a larger business applications system). I expect this
cross-compiler program will take me three or four days to write and test; the
final run (to produce the Databus source program) will probably take (maybe
much) less than five or ten minutes.
In most cases nowadays, at least for programs you won't be running in many
examples and on many occasions, the cost of writing a computer program is hugely
more than the cost of running it.
>And can I leave a copy of the compiler with the client?
In the case of ICON, you most probably can: the ICON compiler (with the
exception of some perhaps commercial adaptations of it) is public domain.
SNOBOL4+ is a commercial product, so you can't leave a copy of that... but it
comes with a royalty-free runtime which you CAN leave with them. And of course,
the other option is to just buy a copy of the compiler for them: at $100 (I
think it's somewhat more than that today), it's unquestionably the best (and
also the most durable) productivity software investment I have -ever- made.
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2