home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu.tar
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
icon
/
newsgrp
/
group96a.txt
/
000075_icon-group-sender _Wed Apr 10 21:47:29 1996.msg
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1996-09-05
|
2KB
Received: by cheltenham.CS.Arizona.EDU; Thu, 11 Apr 1996 07:55:56 MST
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 21:47:29 -0500
Message-Id: <199604110247.VAA10835@ns1.computek.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
From: gep2@computek.net
Subject: How to think about Icon?
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.17
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
Status: O
>I've made periodic stabs at learning icon for some time now, and I've
come to the conclusion that it's completely unlike the languages I've
learned previously.
To say the very least!!! You certainly CAN program Pascal-like techniques in
Icon, but it wastes Icon's wonderful talents. I think the main thing is to
START USING Icon, using whatever algorithms you want, just to get your feet wet.
After you're comfortable with it on a fairly "conventional" programming style,
then I think it makes sense to start looking at other example programs and try
to advance your paradigms to use the new concepts that Icon makes possible.
In the case of SNOBOL4, an excellent resource is "Algorithms in SNOBOL4" by
Gimpel, which helps demonstrate just some of the ways that SNOBOL4's marvelous
collection of unusual features can be actually employed when writing
applications. It helps you develop a "SNOBOL4 programming mentality", and build
the reflexes for ways to attack problems using the language.
>In particular, I have no good mental model for backtracking, so I get confused
by programs which do it. This makes Icon hard for me to take advantage of. :)
Sure... rather like pointers, linked data structures in general, and
recursion... some things you just have to wrap your mind around, and it's not
always trivial to do that in the beginning. Once you have more experience in
attacking real-world problems with a given language, you tend to become more
convinced about the applicability of these more advanced programming
techniques... it's a good motivator. :-)
Does this help?
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2/