RE: [Axiom-developer] NOWEB

[Page, Bill]

Gaby,

On Thursday, May 04, 2006 3:50 PM you wrote:
> ... 
> Maybe there is a confusion about appreciating diverse
> programming languages and appreciating the set of tools
> we should use to deliver a coherent, attractive, scalable,
> and maintainable project.

I understand your point and actually in principle I do agree
with you (and Tim) I just don't think it makes any sense to
take it to the extreme, e.g. "all lisp".

> Bill Page wrote: 
> | I think Icon was a worthy predecessor of the currently very
> | popular web scripting languages like perl and python that
> | came later but did a lot of the same things (not necessarily
> | as well ):
> 
> You mean SNOBOL? :-)

Icon was a child of SNOBOL just as (in a looser sense) perl and
python are children of Icon. But it seems that children often
do not appreciate their parents until they themselves get older.
Perhaps I would be giving too much away to admit that the first
language I ever used with "real string processing" was SNOBOL.
But in fact I never programmed in Icon until last year.

> 
> | 
> | http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/index.htm
> | 
> | Icon has venerable history rather similar to Axiom's,
> | beginning in 1977:
> 
> Thanks; not mean to be rude -- but I'm an Icon hacker.  I spent
> long time studying Icon.  For example, I wanted to add generators
> (not co-routines) to C++; among other things I digested Icon's
> implementation.  That was not too long ago.
> 

I certainly do not consider your comments rude, nor do I mean
any insult. :)

Norman Ramsey's code for doing LaTeX to HTML conversion is written
in Icon and uses the method of completions - not really native to
Icon but quite easily implemented. I learned a lot by studying
that code.

Regards,
Bill Page.