Regarding Michael Jackson structured programming. My first role at ICI was applications programmer. My Senior programmer gave me three program specs that were training specs. The specs came with flowcharts. I duly programmed them in PL/I replete with IF THEN GOTO ELSE GOTO statements. Not a trace of a DO WHILE.
Another senior programmer chuckled when he saw my code. He produced a Jackson structure for each of the programs. Sequence, Iteration and Select. That was when the penny dropped and data driven design made sense. The same programmer built a design language called CODEL (Component Definition Language). Program specs were developed from the program structure diagram. It used an Assembler like syntax with macros for SEQ, SEL and ITER. The beauty of the utility was that it printed the program structure on a 1403 line printer and built assembler code. It was great because if the structure stood up to review, you had a working prototype without writing a line of code. I've always been in awe of people who can conceptualise and implement such great tools. He also had an IQ well over 160 and eschewed MENSA.. On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 4:58 PM David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote: > On 28/3/23 13:26, Tony Harminc wrote: > >> I use programming languages that I don't like all the time. C, in > >> particular, I dislike a lot. That doesn't mean they're not useful. > > Whew! And I thought you were a C fanatic. Thanks for disabusing me of > that. > Ha! I don't develop emotional attachments to programming languages, > except for Lua which I find exceptionally elegant. Its power and > conciseness are truly impressive. I'm still astonished how such a tiny > language can be so powerful with such economy. Nonetheless, I tend to > follow the crowd and use Python as my primary scripting language, even > though I have a preference for Lua. While Kotlin appealed to me for our > latest project, we ultimately opted for Java due to its abundant talent > pool, which eliminated the need for additional training of new hires. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- Wayne V. Bickerdike ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
