The Shape of Code

I is for INTERCAL and Icon.

INTERCAL is a parody of a programming language whose most widely known statement is COME FROM. With the storm in a teacup that once engulfing goto remembered as ancient history, COME FROM now feels like an in-joke for developers who write assembler.

Icon was created by one of the creators of Snobol 4 and so received more attention that it might otherwise have got. The language’s main claim to fame is that generators, known as iterators in more modern languages, are a fundamental building block of its design (the functionality will look very familiar to Python users); Icon is a late period Cambrian explosion language (CLU supported iterators and started life a few years earlier, but I don’t know enough about the language to make a call on the question of fundamental building block status).

Things to read

Books about Icon.