Typos courtesy of my iPhone and my fat fingers!

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 06:53, Tom Marchant 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 22:54:49 -0600, Paul Raulerson wrote:
> 
>>> On Jan 24, 2018, at 10:14 AM, Seymour J Metz wrote:
>>> 
>>> Like many old sayings, it's worth what you paid for it. The z instruction 
>>> set includes operations far more powerful than anything in C, and the lack  
>>> of a  Turing complete macro language makes C highly inflexible.
>>> 
>> 
>> I am not sure that really makes sense. What exactly do you feel is “more 
>> powerful” about the zArch instruction set than “anything” in the C language?
> 
> You can't find any of the more than 1100 instructions in the z/Architecture 
> instruction set that are more powerful than any C language constructs?

Nope. Care to share your opinion with more specifics? I looked at string 
manipulation and standard math. The 50-60 basic instructions, along with the 
grande counterparts, all are pretty simple and comparative.       



> 
>> The C language was actually modeled on the PDP-11 instruction set
> 
> A very primitive instruction set compared to the current z/Architecture 
> instruction set.

At the time, both instruction sets were roughly equivalent. Of course, PDP-11 
development stopped about 30 years ago, while IBM HLASM has continued to 
develop, expand, and gain new capabilities.  


> 
>> As for Macros, well, C macros are generally much simpler than HLASM, though 
>> with good reason. 
> 
> Yes, it was easier to code.

Um, no. I believe HLASM macros were developed more because the mainframe 
compilers were originally designed as multi pass compilers because of resource 
limitations. Compile this phase, load a tape. Compile another phase, load 
another tape. And so on... C did not have those same limitations, probably 
because C is about 10 years younger than IBM 360 assembler.

Unix at AT&T Bell Labs was originally billed as a text processing system, which 
it did very well. But that was kind of a smokescreen to justify the development 
of Unix and C at Bell because Multics was going away. 

> 
>> Most of the functionality embedded in Macros off HLASM is provided by the 
>> standard C libraries. 
> 
> Really? I don't think so.

Yes really. Might want to rethink that. Or not - you are welcome to think what 
you like of course. 

> 
> -- 
> Tom Marchant

I think it is plain silly to think HLASM  is always superior for development 
purposes to other languages, including C. 

In some cases it is superior - such as when bottom up development is called 
for. It can even fit in well in an Agile/SCRUM environment for goodness sake! 
And, to top it all off, it is great fun to program in. 

But in many cases, other languages are far more efficient to use.It is not a 
good or bad thing, it just is. 

There are ways to increase the usability of HLASM in those sub-optimal use 
cases, such as usi structured macros. But you often find a lot of resistance to 
things line that from the HLASM community, and it takes the focus off 
accomplishing what has to be done and moves it to how to do it. Square Hole, 
Round Peg type of thing I think.  :)

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