My background's in C and perl too. And now I'm learning REXX. It seems to me that there are some programming constructs which I'm used to that just aren't included in REXX. Such as:
1. pointers, for linked lists, trees, etc
2. complex data types as parameters and return codes:
There are some people who tell me that stem variables are the best thing ever developed and totally unique to REXX. They seem a lot like associative arrays in perl to me, without the ability to get a list of keys.
But... let's say I have a stem variable with multiple tails; the only way to pass it to a procedure or have the procedure return such a structure is to make it a global. This is scary if you were brought up to believe that globals evil.
How I'd love to do:
student._name='Alex' student._phone='737 1111' rc=DisplayStudentData(student_.)
DisplayStudentData: Procedure
parse arg mystudent.
say 'Name:' mystudent._name 'Number:' mystudent._phone
return 03. syntax checking
Let's say I write:
myname='Alex' say mynaem /* note the typo */
Running this program would return 'mynaem', not a warning like "variable mynaem not declared"
But, really, it's just another programming language. They're not really that different.
- Alex
Ranga Nathan wrote:
Perl sure has some quirky syntax as some of it is derived from C. Scheme is awesome but cryptic. Scheme is even more powerful than Perl, but you have to rise above the mortals, you have to be a geek. Python... hmm a language where indentation is part of the syntax?? .. Ruby, I hear a lot of good things... REXX, I have a lot of good things.... but smells mainframe. I dont like any of the mainframe languages. They suffer from history too much.
Sorry, I am strongly opinionated.
David Boyes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: Linux on 390 Port <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/19/2004 11:17 AM Please respond to Linux on 390 Port
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: Re: Just stirring the pot
If there is one language I love unequivocally, it is Perl. I like the TIMTOWTDI (tim tow tidi). I have applied it to solve the most difficult problems easily.
I don't deny Perl is useful. Larry Wall is considered to be a genius for a number of reasons -- inventing a superior scripting language to csh or Bourne scripts is (IMHO) the least of his achievements.
I *do* claim that Perl is unnecessarily syntactically grotesque -- in all the dictionary senses of the word. If IBM had been wise enough to make REXX freely available at the time Perl was getting started, there were a number of people that really wanted to make REXX widespread. Same thing with NetREXX -- IMHO, it's a vastly superior language to Java -- but IBM wouldn't let it fly free at the time it would have made a difference. Thus we're stuck with Java, a language that propagates the worst features of C *and* C++, and fixes few to none of the flaws of either. Another thing to have to beat out of the new CS grads when they get to the Real World and have to learn how to write maintainable code. I'd really like to find out who thought teaching Scheme as the only real programming language in many of the local CS curricula was a good idea...
(my, I am getting cranky in my old age...bad morning, I guess. We're out of coffee. grr.)
PHP and Python are somewhat better, but REXX is far cleaner and far easier to understand at a glance (and teach to normal mortals with real jobs other than computing) than any of the other three, IMHO. I always considered the System Product Interpreter Users Guide one of the best self-teaching manuals ever written -- *any* random yo-yo can learn enough REXX to be useful from that book.
Too late now, but if only things had been different....
-- db
-- Alex deVries Principal Architect, One Fish Two
