While studying different programming languages, I recently hit upon Icon programming language. It seems to have quite cool syntax and functions for string scanning, goal directed execution, generators etc. and it was developed quite a few decades back (1977).
There doesn't seem to be much information available on it regarding the places it is used currently. It doesn't seem to be actively developed or supported also. I was wondering if people really use this language in certain niche areas even today or is the language now primarily of historical interest? Will it have much relevance in future also?
The TIOBE programming language index http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html places it somewhere between 50th and 100th in terms of
the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors.
If it hasn't gotten any further than that since 1977, I doubt it ever will.
If you're into "cool," complex languages with sophisticated capabilities, Scala may scratch your itch.