The Howdy Glossary

ICI is an interpreted, prototype-based programming language created by Tim Long. The name stands for "I Can't Imagine," reflecting the author's sentiment that he couldn't imagine a language much more dynamic and expressive than ICI at the time of its creation. The ICI language syntax combines elements from C and Smalltalk, featuring first-class functions, garbage collection, object-oriented programming support without classes or inheritance chains, optional static typing through type hints or contracts, as well as advanced control constructs like coroutines. Despite its powerful capabilities for meta-programming and succinctness in expressing complex algorithms or data structures, ICI remains relatively obscure compared to mainstream languages such as Python or JavaScript due to lack of larger community support and marketing efforts.