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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!ig!arizona!gudeman
From: gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Is ICON higher level than Prolog?
Message-ID: <6816@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 27 Aug 88 02:19:27 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 15

In article  <13919@ames.arc.nasa.gov> raymond@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov.arpa (Eric Raymond  RIA) writes:
>In article <6797@megaron.arizona.edu> gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
>>I don't know how much the author knows about Icon, but Icon is like
>>Prolog in that an experienced programmer can get a lot more
>>performance out of the language by knowledge of the implementation.
>
>And you call this a high level language?

You know, I've said the exact same thing about Prolog :-).  The answer
for Icon is that this efficiency thing is a consequence of the
_implementation_ of Icon, not a consequence of the definition of the
language.  So, I should have said that given the UA's current
implementation of Icon, an experienced programmer can get a lot more
performance out of the language.  I firmly believe that this is a Bad
Thing, and that it should be changed (someday).