On 3/08/2013 3:21 PM, Wayne Bickerdike wrote:
If I ever praised COBOL, I must have had a gun to my head at the time!
You must be feeling suicidal in your old age mate! Didn't you say "I
look at COBOL like my old violin, ancient technology but still hard to
beat in the right hands"?
Generally, the more PL/I like a language is, the better I like it. The
original if flawed assertion that COBOL was "English like" explains a
lot. English is a basket case of a language.
Especially when spoken with a thick yorkshire accent! ;)
Sampai jumpa lagi!
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 10:45 AM, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote:
Make up your mind Wayne. It's was only a couple of weeks ago you sent me email
praising COBOL!
On 03/08/2013, at 8:17 AM, Wayne Bickerdike <[email protected]> wrote:
Aww, it was getting interesting. Not been the same since the days of
Ali and Frazier.
Personally, I wish C had never seen the light of day and PL/I had the
place of COBOL.
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 4:06 AM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote:
I don't think you are really interested in how a qsort-like procedure
is implemented in PL/I, and I am not at all open-minded about the
relative merits of C and PL/I.
I do, however, want to make one final comment on your last post.
Compile-time binding is not a 'trick'. It is preferable to
execution-time binding when it meets the requirements of a situation.
That said, our differences are visceral, not intellectual; further
exchanges between us will not clarify any issue; they would only
produce more acrimony. I shall try to avoid you here on IBM-MAIN, but
that may not always be possible if we both contribute to a thread. I
have put you on my kill list so that I will not see your posts unless
they are part of a thread to which I have already contributed or
quoted by someone else; and that should help.
Good luck!
On 8/2/13, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2/08/2013 11:47 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
As it happens a PL/I generic statement can distinguish the two sorting
schemes in the example you cite very readily. The first has two
arguments, the second three, so that, simplistically,
declare generic_sort generic(sort1 when(*,*), sort2 when(*,*,*)) ;
does the job at compile time. (It can be done at execution time too,
but this is not the place for an explication of how.)
I'm not interested in compile time tricks. How would you code the
equivilent of the C qsort() function in PL/I?
Does the PL/I runtime even have such a function?
Your catholic taste in statement-level languages is admirable, much
less parochial than mine: I have never been able to include COBOL
among the languages I approve. I have, for my sins, had to confront a
good deal of it; but close acquaintance has not made me fonder of it.
What must be conceded is that the post-CODASYL language is improving.
It is useful to have substrings even if one must call them reference
modifications.
I made good money coding COBOL in the 90s so I approve of it. I write
code to put food on the table not for religious reasons.
I would rather be employed writing code in a language I dislike instead
of unemployed coding for fun. The more languages I
can master the more strings to my bow. Adaptability is important in the
software industry.
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
--
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
