> he raison d'être of the mainframe is to run applications written in COBOL.
What is FORTRAN, chopped liver? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of David Crayford [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, January 7, 2022 11:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ... Re: Top 8 Reasons for using Python instead of REXX for z/OS On 8/1/22 1:42 am, Tony Harminc wrote: > 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. It's interesting that no language since COBOL has ever tried to emulate the "english" syntax. It turns out that it was not actually a terribly good idea. Programmers preferred languages with more concise syntax. BTW, I'm not knocking COBOL. I'm a mainframe guy and I'm cognizant to the fact that the raison d'être of the mainframe is to run applications written in COBOL. PL/I programmers will disagree but COBOL is king. >> 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
