Memories from when the majority of my programming information/influences (I was bbs/modem-less) in the early 90s came from this CD-ROM disc that I had purchased. It was from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel
The CD-ROM had this whole SNOBOL directory iirc. This CD-ROM was my entire world for like two years (until I got Internet access in 1995). I miss having oodles of time with zero pressure to do something that pays the bills.
It was like having this gigantic curated dump of collected, sometimes quite old information from a connected world I had no access to. It felt so weird. Like discovering ancient alien civilizations, with no information on how to decipher it all.
I think so many of us were so starved for information back then.
I have never looked at SNOBOL code before. I had heard of it because the arcade game TRON had a SNOBOL level (in addition to levels: FORTRAN, BASIC, etc.).
I had also not seen the Eliza code before. Very fun.
I was always fascinated by that whole lineage Snobol -> Icon -> Unicon. I seem to remember one of the members (Icon?) is in "7 languages in 7 weeks." I'm sorry not to see them take off, although the recent flood of stories on Prolog (two of them!) makes me wonder if we might see the revival of Icon one of these days.
(Is Rebol related, or am I just free-associating languages with interesting control structures?)
Neither have I, and this has gotten me excited solely because of that. I had heard SNOBOL's name back in the 80's a lot, along with COMAL, COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG, etc. This looks like a hybrid between COBOL and FORTRAN :)
Memories from when the majority of my programming information/influences (I was bbs/modem-less) in the early 90s came from this CD-ROM disc that I had purchased. It was from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel
The CD-ROM had this whole SNOBOL directory iirc. This CD-ROM was my entire world for like two years (until I got Internet access in 1995). I miss having oodles of time with zero pressure to do something that pays the bills.
It was like having this gigantic curated dump of collected, sometimes quite old information from a connected world I had no access to. It felt so weird. Like discovering ancient alien civilizations, with no information on how to decipher it all.
I think so many of us were so starved for information back then.
I have never looked at SNOBOL code before. I had heard of it because the arcade game TRON had a SNOBOL level (in addition to levels: FORTRAN, BASIC, etc.).
I had also not seen the Eliza code before. Very fun.
Both SNOBOL and its spiritual successor Icon did some interesting things with control flow.
That brings me back! One of my profs had us use Unicon, an extension of Icon that he designed.
I was always fascinated by that whole lineage Snobol -> Icon -> Unicon. I seem to remember one of the members (Icon?) is in "7 languages in 7 weeks." I'm sorry not to see them take off, although the recent flood of stories on Prolog (two of them!) makes me wonder if we might see the revival of Icon one of these days.
(Is Rebol related, or am I just free-associating languages with interesting control structures?)
Neither have I, and this has gotten me excited solely because of that. I had heard SNOBOL's name back in the 80's a lot, along with COMAL, COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG, etc. This looks like a hybrid between COBOL and FORTRAN :)
I’ve wanted to see SNOBOL code in the wild for 40 years. Long time getting that itch scratched.
The fact that one of the variables is named 'POST' makes some of this code read quite funny in todays context