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000041_icon-group-sender _Fri Feb 21 14:33:47 1997.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:55:39 MST
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 14:33:47 -0600
Message-Id: <199702212033.OAA00872@ns1.cmpu.net>
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From: gep2@computek.net
Subject: What's the biggest Icon program you've written?
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
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>What's the biggest Icon program you've written? What did it do?
Probably my biggest Icon program was a program which attempted to find out which
of a number of outstanding invoices for a given customer were intended to be
covered by a check sent by the customer. I don't recall offhand how big it was,
(this was several years ago) but probably not much more than a few hundred lines
in any case.
The biggest programs I've written in SNOBOL4 have been bigger (several thousand
lines), probably either (1) the pattern-matching intelligent mini-disassembler
for Intel machine instructions, or (2) a cross-compiler which aids in
cross-compiling Motorola-flavor assembler language programs to Intel-flavor
assembler language. The script compiler I wrote for the French Social Security
administration was impressively short, given its functionality.
>Do you have any "lessons learned" you'd like to share?
Be prepared to use the features of the languages creatively!!
>Did you have any efficiency issues to overcome?
Yes... one question (on the invoice/payment matcher especially) is trying to
decide which possible optimizations would take longer than the time they might
be able to save!!!
>Did you use coexpressions?
I don't recall up to now ever using coexpressions, although I think they could
be very useful in other circumstances.
>Have you ever needed to "sell" Icon to management?
I've never had great difficulty with this. As a consultant, I'm usually hired
BECAUSE of my expertise in how to best attack the customer's problem... they're
not likely to condemn my advice on technical grounds. (And of course, they're
paying me by the hour/day... so the most effective development tools both saves
them money, and gets their problem solved faster).
>Are they distracted by inferior yet more popular and less powerful languages?
They will sometimes ask about them, but I've never yet had a customer force me
to write a program for them in a tool other than the one I recommended to them.
If they INSISTED, I'd adhere to their choice: it's their money!
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2/