Icon is a high-level, general-purpose programming language novel features including string scanning and goal-directed evaluation.

A simple fact keeps me coming back to Icon: With Icon, I can write programs I don’t have the time to write in C or C++. Without Icon, those programs wouldn’t be written and tasks that could be automated would be done manually instead.

When teaching a course in comparative programming languages at The Univer- sity of Arizona, I took the liberty of attempting to identify the design philosophy of Icon:

• provide a “critical mass” of types and operations
• free the programmer from worrying about details
• put the burden of efficiency on the language implementation

C scores about zero on those points. C++ provides the ability to build or buy a “critical mass” and it also can free the programmer from worrying about details in many cases, but that takes effort. With Icon, it comes in the box.

I think that many programmers don’t have a language like Icon in their toolbox. The result is that instead of building a personal tool to automate a task, the task is done manually. I think every programmer can benefit by knowing a language like Icon.

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