Anyone who writes a compiler or assembler is quite complex. And very likely thousands of lines of code that took years to develop. More in line with the COBOL programs I was referencing. Not some 40 line REXX program that took a day or two. In College, I wrote an ATM machine. It took the entire semester and was my class project. Way more complex than a 40 line REXX/CLIST or the APL mirage you mention. Show me the 1 line complex APL program. Remembering, I’m a math major.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Sunday, August 22, 2021, 6:09 AM, Jeremy Nicoll <jn.ls.mfrm...@letterboxes.org> wrote: On Sun, 22 Aug 2021, at 02:51, Bill Johnson wrote: > “Programming” in REXX, CLIST, and similar types of languages is hardly > programming. Real programming is hundreds or thousands of lines of > COBOL, with IMS, DB2, or CICS calls. So... if someone writes a compiler or assembler, or a whole OS - none of which contain IMS, DB2, or CICS calls - it's not "real programming"? The length of a program is no indication of its complexity. A good case in point is that in APL a useful program can be written in one line. It's near guaranteed that it won't be comprehensible (APL is commonly regarded as a "write once, read (ie understand later) never" language. A COBOL program that makes calls out to IMS, DB2, CICS etc is quite a lot like a REXX exec that makes calls out to external services. The meat of the task is not being done by either COBOL or REXX which in both cases are the glue that holds the other stuff together. -- Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
