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000027_icon-group-sender _Wed May 24 18:45:00 1995.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Wed, 24 May 1995 17:40:26 MST
Message-Id: <9505241845.AA16793@ns1.computek.net>
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Date: Wed, 24 May 95 18:45 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
>Interpreted languages have many advantages over "native
code".
I certainly agree. I worked for more than nine years at Datapoint, and our
Datashare system there was better in many ways than a direct-executing system
could have been.
>Speed need not be an advantage of "native code". An
interpreter that is structured and sized to behave well in
a cache can run faster than native code that does not fit.
That's unlikely to be the main reason, but there are others... including the
fact that you can sometimes start to execute a program before it is entirely
loaded, and some parts (particularly those which are involved in handling
exceptional conditions or unused program options) may not even EVER be loaded.
It also makes it easier to provide corrected runtime libraries without having to
modify compiled programs... and leaving all that common code out of compiled
programs, leaving just one copy on your hard drive, no matter how many
applications you have that uses it.
>But perhaps more important are two things:
> 1) The portability and availability that an interpreter can
provide. In this regard Perl is just such a win.
Well, that's perhaps a poor example since Perl is such a piece of rubbish,
compared to either SNOBOL4 or ICON. I can't much imagine why anybody here would
DREAM of wasting time learning or using Perl.
2) The richness of the language and the abstraction it
provides.
Certainly either ICON or SNOBOL4 are a revelation to anybody who's previously
only dealt with primitive languages like C or Pascal.
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2