ralph@CS.ARIZONA.EDU ("Ralph Griswold") (11/15/90)
To dispel any misconceptions, the name "Icon" for the Icon programming language is not an acronym nor does it stand for anything. It's just a name. It seemed appropriate (at the time) -- I recall mentioning that the language design was somewhat iconoclastic. Regrettably, we couldn't see the future and the use of the word "icon" for pictograms to identify functions and objects on computer screens. This has caused some confusion and misunderstanding -- some folks see the word "Icon" and expect a programming language for manipulating Icons. The fact that our selection of the word came first doesn't help a lot. Someone asked about the origin of the name SNOBOL4 for an earlier programming language. SNOBOL4 is an acronmyn (of sorts) for StriNg Oriented symBOic Language. We were intending to poke fun at the way acronyms for programming languages were derived. But no one thought it was funny. Ralph Griswold / Dept of Computer Science / Univ of Arizona / Tucson, AZ 85721 +1 602 621 6609 ralph@cs.arizona.edu uunet!arizona!ralph