PL/I (or actually PL/C) was the first language I was exposed to, also - took a class in college while getting my Accounting degree - and I still think it's wonderful. A classmate was interviewing me for a job with his employer a few years later and asked me what I thought to be the principle advantage of PL/I. For me that was easy: Detailed control of storage. (He agreed with me, but he didn't hire me.)
A few years later I worked for a university and got a chance to teach myself Algol. What I remember most about it is the paucity of its built-in functions, but it was easy enough to write my own so it didn't bother me much. I agree with Seymour: If you can program in one language, you can learn another. At least, so it seems to me. Programming is an approach to a problems, not the actual language. I not tired yet of learning more. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* Opinions expressed in this post are not those of my employer. The opinion of my employer is that I should get back to work. */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2023 06:35 Yes, COBOL has a lot of faults, and, yes, I consider PL/I to be much better. However, a real programmer should be able to pick up a new language and be productive in it, even one that he hates. I distinguish between a person that views programming through COBOL colored glasses and a programmer who happens to be using COBOL; it is unfair to link the latter with the faults of the former. IMHO, nobody really knows a language unless they are able to see deficiencies in a language. I love PL/I and REXX, but there are definitely things that I would change in each. ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Wayne Bickerdike Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2023 1:56 AM During my early training we were sent to learn Michael Jackson structured programming. MJ quotes Dijkstra a lot, however, I didn't realise that he was a PL/I hater. That was the first language I learned and still think it was a masterpiece. I encountered COBOL after I left IBM and it happened to be Microfocus COBOL, a very odd variant designed for Z80/CPM based microcomputers. It barely did the job since it only supported a rudimentary ISAM file system. A couple of years later as our software house was going broke, I went for an interview for a DOS/VSE COBOL role. The customer was doubtful that my MF COBOL would translate to a mainframe role. It didn't prove to be a problem but oh how I wished it had been a PL/I shop. --- On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 4:27 PM Tony Harminc <[email protected]> wrote: > "If Fortran has been called an infantile disorder, PL/I must be > classified as a fatal disease." > -Edsger Dijkstra in Introduction to the Art of Computer Programming > > Which prompted, or at least provided a juicy quote for, Ric Holt's > 1972 paper "Teaching the Fatal Disease (or) Introductory Computer > Programming Using PL/I". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
