On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 11:45, Lionel B. Dyck <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've been following this thread and one thing that has yet to appear, or I > missed it, has to do with 4GL's and the drive, at one point, for languages > that were more human oriented - those that could be written more like a > normal sentence or phrase, and avoid the technical jargon/gobblygook/syntax. > As I recall in the 1980's there were a few but nothing came of them, instead > we have languages that have their own syntax, and which require extensive > learning but nothing that allows a non-programmer to actually generate a > complex business program. COBOL was supposed to be that, no? Managers could in theory at least read (if not write) a COBOL program and understand what it does, because it so (superficially) resembles English. > From my experience, REXX has many of the 4GL goals as the syntax isn't overly > complex and is something a non-programmer can comprehend rather easily. As > has been previously mentioned in this thread, REXX can be more readily > learned and used than the majority of the current languages. It isn't perfect > but it works very well. Indeed. Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
