subject:"Re\: Quote on Slashdot.org"

In 1380556479.82676.yahoomail...@web181404.mail.ne1.yahoo.com, on
09/30/2013
   at 08:54 AM, Lloyd Fuller leful...@sbcglobal.net said:

Actually in some circles ADA is the ONLY language.  Talk to the
embedded systems people.

Some of them use C; I consider that unfortunate.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In
cajtoo59splchkyh6+v6esj3xftjek0f1vk+nngk-equbyb4...@mail.gmail.com,
on 09/30/2013
   at 11:40 AM, Mike Schwab mike.a.sch...@gmail.com said:

Pascal is like an improved PL/I,

ITYM Pascal is like a degraded ALGOL 60; it is nowhere near as good as
PL/I, and has severe design deficiencies, some of which were fixed by
ISO. Take forward declarations - please.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In 524a1605.4070...@phoenixsoftware.com, on 09/30/2013
   at 05:23 PM, Ed Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com said:

Later PL/I versions did a great job optimizing

Do they now generate inline code for the unaligned bit strings in,
e.g., SMF records? That's an area where the code quality got worse
going from F to optimizing.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In
cae1xxdhjm-cpvsewgp4qvc-uon0gfmgozdvtb6m+kxp66p6...@mail.gmail.com,
on 09/30/2013
   at 04:51 PM, John Gilmore jwgli...@gmail.com said:

Many C dialects do support long jumps as a language extension.

They began in PL/I 

Every generation believes that it invented sex. I won't guaranty that
ALGOL 60 was first, but it was certainly before PL/I.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In 7587727851703990.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on
09/30/2013
   at 04:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said:

(And ALGOL 60 allows such label objects to be
passed as actual parameters; I don't know about PL/I.)

Yes; a label variable in PL/I includes a frame pointer.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In 0017796631753457.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on
09/30/2013
   at 03:26 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said:

Pascal has GOTO.  Dismayingly, statement labels are numeric, perhaps
a legacy of FORTRAN (and ALGOL 60).

ALGOL 60 had alphanumeric labels, and there was a consensus that
allowing numeric labels had been a mistake.

In my opinion, the greatest value of GOTO is the longjump; 

I've had very few cases where a GOTO out of block[1] was the cleanest
way to code something. I see its greatest value as implementing new
control structures, e.g., a CASE statement before SELECT came along.

[2] Where I've done it, it was to exit from an ON unit.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In
a90e503c23f97441b05ee302853b0e62901977c...@fspas01ev010.fspa.myntet.se,
on 10/01/2013
   at 01:23 PM, Thomas Berg thomas.b...@swedbank.se said:

Personally I am of the opinion that a programming language is for the
benefit of the programmer, to be least hindered in the coding.

Short term or long term?

It should help the coding and minimize both syntax pondering and
keystrokes. 

IMHO it's more important that the code be readable than that it be
brief.

A programming language should not have a role of disciplining the
programmer.

We'll have to agree to disagree. A language should certainly not be a
straight jacket, but I view catching errors early on to be assisting
me rather than disciplining me.

If the program is not correct the additional effort caused by that
is not exceeding what would be caused by a disciplining language
in the same case.  

Do you consider Ada to be a disciplining language? I certainly
didn't find its consistency requirements to be an impediment to
writing my code.

Note that a bad programmer makes bad programs regardless of the
language he uses. 

Yes, but a language with booby traps makes it worse. Take C - please!

If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and
rough edges, it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

I like REXX, and have done a lot of scripting in it, but there are
significant issues with it.

1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax. 

I am astonished that you could say that (-;

REXX look enough like PL/I to trip up those with PL/I finger macros.
and has features that seem to continually trip up the newbies.

2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of
the code effort. 

The same could be said for any language; its syntax and semantics are
designed around the particular tasks that the language developers had
in mind. There are things that can be done easily in CLIST that cannot
be done in REXX, and I find myself writing a lot of Perl despite the
warts because its functionality is much more helpful for my goals.

4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer. 

Not compared to APL ;-)

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-03 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

shmuel+...@patriot.net (Shmuel Metz  , Seymour J.) writes:
 Every generation believes that it invented sex. I won't guaranty that
 ALGOL 60 was first, but it was certainly before PL/I.

this has some PL/I history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/I

in the 70s ... lots of the languages were in downtown NYC in the
time/life bldg ... when that got shutdown, some eventually show up to
STL (now called silicon valley lab). This has reference to time-life
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP7090.html
this also has reference to time/life
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1401.html

Then they outsourced PL/I to an outside company ... and transferred lots
of technology to the company ... including advanced code optimizing
techniques from other parts of the company unrelated to PL/I. this
results in some amount of uproar comments from around the company. a
little longer discussion in this past post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#71

this has some PL/I history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/I

it doesn't mention the outsourcing ... but it does mention STL launched
an entirely new compiler in 1992 (possibly part of bringing it back in
house).

it does mention work by the IBM Boston Programming Center ... which
was also in 545 tech sq ... multics implemented in pli on the 5th
flr, ibm science center on the 4th flr, and the boston programming
center on the 3rd flr.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#36
other posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

Jean Sammet was also at the boston programming center on the 3rd flr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_E._Sammet

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In 524ab804.2030...@gmail.com, on 10/01/2013
   at 07:54 PM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com said:

There are many versions of Pascal.

Using features limited to, e.g., Turbo, limits portability.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In 6857679143944180.wa.ibmmaintpg.com...@listserv.ua.edu, on
10/01/2013
   at 06:41 AM, Shane Ginnane ibm-m...@tpg.com.au said:

Sounds more like Perl than REXX

Trust me, Perl runs roughshod over the principle of least astonishment
and is not within shouting distance of KISS. It does, however, have a
lot of expressive power and an awesome package repository.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

In
a90e503c23f97441b05ee302853b0e62901977c...@fspas01ev010.fspa.myntet.se,
on 10/01/2013
   at 02:09 PM, Thomas Berg thomas.b...@swedbank.se said:

H... From the little I have seen of Perl, it's like a gun pointed
to your foot... :) 

I think I rather prefer Python. 

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The fact that the indentation
level is significant can make things interesting when editing a
program.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-03 Thread Paul Gilmartin

On Thu, 3 Oct 2013 16:57:13 -0400, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:

I think I rather prefer Python.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The fact that the indentation
level is significant can make things interesting when editing a
program.
 
I need to ponder that.

A while back, on TSO-REXX, I advocated labelling END statements to
take advantage of the processor's enforcing that they match the
DOs, and complained that the processor ignores some mismatches.

A steadfast partisan said that doesn't matter; disciplined use of
indention provides equivalent function.  I said that would be true
only if the processor enforced the indention conventions.  Perhaps
Python provides the needed discipline.

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-03 Thread David Crayford


On 4/10/2013 12:47 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:

On Thu, 3 Oct 2013 16:57:13 -0400, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:

I think I rather prefer Python.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The fact that the indentation
level is significant can make things interesting when editing a
program.


I need to ponder that.

A while back, on TSO-REXX, I advocated labelling END statements to
take advantage of the processor's enforcing that they match the
DOs, and complained that the processor ignores some mismatches.

A steadfast partisan said that doesn't matter; disciplined use of
indention provides equivalent function.  I said that would be true
only if the processor enforced the indention conventions.  Perhaps
Python provides the needed discipline.


I thought it was controversial at the time but now I am absolute 
convinced it's the way to go. Look at coffeescript which is a javascript
compiler which strips out the braces and semi-colons. Very popular these 
days as is haml which does the same sort

of thing to HTML/CSS.


-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)

In 957ca5bb-6dc8-423f-a983-cc947c960...@yahoo.com, on 09/30/2013
   at 01:11 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com said:

I wonder why the government chose Ada...?

First, it was designed under DOD auspices specifically for mission
critical work. Second, it's a much better language than most of the
alternatives. Take C - please!

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)

In 52491967.4070...@gmail.com, on 09/30/2013
   at 02:25 PM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com said:

There is no doubt that Ada is a much, much better programming
language then PL/I, C, COBOL etc.

I could make a case for PL/I, and there are languages that are clearly
better than Ada for specific niches, e.g., Icon, SETL. Still, as a
language available on lots of platforms and not beset by booby traps,
it's hard to beat.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread M Baker

I remember 
reading that Fred Brooks regrets that it wasn't the systems programming 
language for OS/360. I suppose because it was a  big, complex language 
for the time it didn't quite make the cut.

I've always been kind of curious about that.  I wonder if, although (since) it 
was as you wrote big, complex for the time, whether it was a question of risk 
management at seminal early stage of OS/360 development that caused assembler 
to be used so extensively.in the sense that the latter was a 'known 
quantity' in an environment where there were more than enough other relative 
unknowns in play.  Or perhaps from an alternate history perspective, whether 
PL/1 would have proven up to the task functionally at that point ?  Exactly 
when was the PL/S systems programming flavor devloped and put into use ?  And 
was PL/1 ever really implemented on predecessors to the 360 (70xx perhaps or 
some other pre 360 IBM mainframe), either for internal company use or made more 
generally available -- would that even have made sense ?

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Gross, Randall [PRI-1PP]

In college, I used the PL/1 F compiler on a 360/40 running PCP, circa 1971.

It was horribly buggy.  Of course, I have no idea if the college kept 
maintenance up to date. 

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of M Baker
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 9:32 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

I remember
reading that Fred Brooks regrets that it wasn't the systems programming 
language for OS/360. I suppose because it was a  big, complex language for the 
time it didn't quite make the cut.

I've always been kind of curious about that.  I wonder if, although (since) it 
was as you wrote big, complex for the time, whether it was a question of risk 
management at seminal early stage of OS/360 development that caused assembler 
to be used so extensively.in the sense that the latter was a 'known 
quantity' in an environment where there were more than enough other relative 
unknowns in play.  Or perhaps from an alternate history perspective, whether 
PL/1 would have proven up to the task functionally at that point ?  Exactly 
when was the PL/S systems programming flavor devloped and put into use ?  And 
was PL/1 ever really implemented on predecessors to the 360 (70xx perhaps or 
some other pre 360 IBM mainframe), either for internal company use or made more 
generally available -- would that even have made sense ?

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Barry Merrill

I recall a study many years ago with regard to which statistics tools was best, 
among active statisticians, with many criteria
in the survey questions, that concluded that the strongest correlation was with 
one single answer: What was your FIRST statistics tool used?

Barry Merrill

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Pew, Curtis G

On Oct 2, 2013, at 8:32 AM, M Baker baker...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I remember 
 reading that Fred Brooks regrets that it wasn't the systems programming 
 language for OS/360. I suppose because it was a  big, complex language 
 for the time it didn't quite make the cut.
 
 I've always been kind of curious about that.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/I#Early_history):

The language was first specified in detail in the manual “PL/I Language 
Specifications. C28-6571” written in New York from 1965 and superseded by “PL/I 
Language Specifications. GY33-6003” written in Hursley from 1967. IBM continued 
to develop PL/I in the late sixties and early seventies, publishing it in the 
GY33-6003 manual. These manuals were used by the Multics group and other early 
implementers.

The first compiler was delivered in 1966. The Standard for PL/I was approved 
in 1976.

So I think the answer to the question Why wasn't PL/I used for OS/360? is It 
didn't exist yet.

-- 
Curtis Pew (c@its.utexas.edu)
ITS Systems Core
The University of Texas at Austin

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

l...@garlic.com (Anne  Lynn Wheeler) writes:
 for the fun of it I did a rewrite in pascal of a major portion of the
 VM370 kernel (done in assembler) ... and demonstrated it running
 (faster) in virtual address space interacting with a smaller vm370
 kernel. part of the issue was that mainframe PLI came with really
 heavyweight library environment ... while Pascal could run in
 effectively as an independent embedded environment. Note that this
 wasn't directly a fault of PLI language ... since MIT Project MAC used
 PLI language to implement the Multics operating system.
 http://www.multicians.org/multics.html

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#36 Quote on Slashdot.org

not only didn't Pascal sofware have the vulnerabilities epidemic in C
language software ... but Multics PLI also didn't have those
vulnerabilities ... old posts referencing IBM Research paper
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the 
Multics Security Evaluation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the 
Multics Security Evaluation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#45 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the 
Multics Security Evaluation

original paper now 40yrs ago
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/karg74.pdf
ibm research paper a decade ago
http://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf

there was little competition between the science center on the 4th flr
tech sq with cp67/cms (later morphs into vm370) and project mac on the
5th flr and multics ... some past posts mentioning tech sq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

from long ago and far away
http://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
and theirs
http://www.multicians.org/mgs.html#SiteN

another cp/67 story (USL was in another bldg in tech sq)
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

complete list of mutlics sites
http://www.multicians.org/sites.html

psuedo competition was one of my hobbies was providing highly modified
custom virtual machine systems for internal datacenters. it wasn't
fair to compare total number of multics to total number of vm370 or
even total number of multics to total number of internal vm370 ... but
could compare total number of multics to number of internal csc/vm sites
(well over 100 at one point). old email referencing csc/vm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

another multics
http://www.multicians.org/mga.html#AFDSC
and I tweaked them with AFDS looking at 20 vm/4341s which turned
into 210 vm/4341s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404
posting in multics discussion group
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#12

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Scott Ford

Barry,
GDDM ...then SAS 

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD

'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'


 On Oct 2, 2013, at 9:47 AM, Barry Merrill ba...@mxg.com wrote:
 
 I recall a study many years ago with regard to which statistics tools was 
 best, among active statisticians, with many criteria
 in the survey questions, that concluded that the strongest correlation was 
 with one single answer: What was your FIRST statistics tool used?
 
 Barry Merrill
 
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Richard Pinion

One of the colleges I attended, 1977-78, used a Honeywell system running 
Multics.  PL/I was taught as well as IBM 360 assembler.  I was told the IBM 
assembler ran under an 360 emulator.  The university did its own mods to the OS.

--- curtis@austin.utexas.edu wrote:

From: Pew, Curtis G curtis@austin.utexas.edu
To:   IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 14:02:19 +

On Oct 2, 2013, at 8:32 AM, M Baker baker...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I remember 
 reading that Fred Brooks regrets that it wasn't the systems programming 
 language for OS/360. I suppose because it was a  big, complex language 
 for the time it didn't quite make the cut.

 I've always been kind of curious about that.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/I#Early_history):

The language was first specified in detail in the manual “PL/I Language 
Specifications. C28-6571” written in New York from 1965 and superseded by “PL/I 
Language Specifications. GY33-6003” written in Hursley from 1967. IBM continued 
to develop PL/I in the late sixties and early seventies, publishing it in the 
GY33-6003 manual. These manuals were used by the Multics group and other early 
implementers.

The first compiler was delivered in 1966. The Standard for PL/I was approved 
in 1976.

So I think the answer to the question Why wasn't PL/I used for OS/360? is It 
didn't exist yet.

-- 
Curtis Pew (c@its.utexas.edu)
ITS Systems Core
The University of Texas at Austin

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_
Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.

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PL/1 and System 360 was a combined effort; OS/360, too.
The same way as the 360 architecture should make all other
platforms obsolete, PL/1 was supposed to make all other programming
languages obsolete. As we know today, the first goal was reached -
well, almost - but the second failed.

The PL/1 compilers were behind schedule, and the OS/360 system, too.
There was no way to do OS/360 in PL/1, because there was no usable
compiler to do it.

In contrast: the Multics project first built a very good PL/1 compiler, and
then the Multics system was implemented, using this compiler.

There are other success stories like this, for example the programming
language PS440 in Germany for the Telefunken TR 440 mainframe
and the (experimental) multi processor operating system BSM.

Some times later, IBM learned that (IBM's) PL/1 wll never be smart
enough to
be used as a language for operating system development, and so they
developed
several down striped dialects like PL/S, PL/X, PL.8 (I don't know much
about this,

because IBM does not talk much about this to customers).

But anyway: nobody knows today about BSM, and almost nobody about Multics,
but the offspring of OS/360 and PL/1 is still alive and well.

Kind regards

Bernd

Am 02.10.2013 15:32, schrieb M Baker:

I remember
reading that Fred Brooks regrets that it wasn't the systems programming
language for OS/360. I suppose because it was a big, complex language
for the time it didn't quite make the cut.

I've always been kind of curious about that. I wonder if, although (since) it was as you wrote
big, complex for the time, whether it was a question of risk management at seminal
early stage of OS/360 development that caused assembler to be used so extensively.in the sense
that the latter was a 'known quantity' in an environment where there were more than enough other
relative unknowns in play. Or perhaps from an alternate history perspective, whether PL/1 would
have proven up to the task functionally at that point ? Exactly when was the PL/S
systems programming flavor devloped and put into use ? And was PL/1 ever really implemented on
predecessors to the 360 (70xx perhaps or some other pre 360 IBM mainframe), either for internal
company use or made more generally available -- would that even have made sense ?

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Bernd Oppolzer


Hello Tony,

I think, I have a description somewhere of the 1979 variant of P-Code used
in the Stanford compiler (scanned document). I'll send it to you offline.

The two passes of the compiler are written in Pascal, and the second one
generates 370 object code from P-Code; it writes the 80 byte object code
records directly using Pascal-I/O.

My regression tests go like this: compile the new compiler using the old 
compiler,
then compile it again, using the new compiler, then compile some test 
programs

and look for changes in the generated code. Evaluate them.

Kind regards

Bernd



Am 02.10.2013 03:40, schrieb Tony Harminc:

On 1 October 2013 20:06, Bernd Oppolzer bernd.oppol...@t-online.de wrote:

Stanford PASCAL also generates P-Code in the first step,
which in the second step is translated to 370 machine code.

Interesting; I had thought that P-code was only interpreted.


BTW: The P-Code of the 1982 variant of the Stanford compiler
had been extended compared to the 1979 variant, and because
I found only a description of the 1979 variant, it was a little bit
complicated to find out what the new P-Code instructions do.
There is not one P-Code, but many variants of P-Code.

And: it turned out, that the P-Code is not so machine-independant
as it should be. There will be some difficulties regarding character
sets etc., when I try to port the compiler to an ASCII based platform,
for example (which I would like to do in the future).

You could instead generate JVM bytecodes... It's almost machine-independent.

I haven't looked at P-code (is there an accessible overview?), but had
heard of it long ago. When Java came out I looked at the JVM reference
book, and thought - Oh, this isn't too complicated, I could write an
interpreter for it in a week or so and have my own JVM. But it turns
out that the hard part of a JVM isn't the bytecode interpreter at all;
it's all the class loading stuff.

I imagine the P-code system doesn't have such heavy baggage.

Tony H.


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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Paul Gilmartin

On Wed, 2 Oct 2013 17:03:09 +0200, Bernd Oppolzer wrote:

PL/1 and System 360 was a combined effort; OS/360, too.
The same way as the 360 architecture should make all other
platforms obsolete, PL/1 was supposed to make all other programming
languages obsolete. As we know today, the first goal was reached -
well, almost - but the second failed.
 
almost?  By what metric can the x86 be discounted?  Number of
installed systems?  Aggregate installed processing capacity (MIPS)?
Aggregate installed dollar value (I don't know)?  Aggregate installed
data storage?  Other (specify)?

Did you compose your message to this list on a z, or on an obsolete
other platform?

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Bernd Oppolzer


Please look at is this way - with a little sense of humour:

IBM had with this architecture for some time (in the late 60s and in the 
70s)

such a strong postion on the global computer market, that indeed almost
all other architectures were obsolete or niche platforms. Even here in 
Germany,

where the government told the universities and other legal offices to buy
German computers like Siemens, Nixdorf or Telefunken, they often succeeded
to buy IBM machines, anyway. And the industry did what they liked.

Today, of course, it is much different. But in those days it was this way.

Micros and PCs didn't count for professional use before at least 1980.

Kind regards

Bernd



Am 02.10.2013 17:26, schrieb Paul Gilmartin:

On Wed, 2 Oct 2013 17:03:09 +0200, Bernd Oppolzer wrote:


PL/1 and System 360 was a combined effort; OS/360, too.
The same way as the 360 architecture should make all other
platforms obsolete, PL/1 was supposed to make all other programming
languages obsolete. As we know today, the first goal was reached -
well, almost - but the second failed.


almost?  By what metric can the x86 be discounted?  Number of
installed systems?  Aggregate installed processing capacity (MIPS)?
Aggregate installed dollar value (I don't know)?  Aggregate installed
data storage?  Other (specify)?

Did you compose your message to this list on a z, or on an obsolete
other platform?

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Tony Harminc

On 1 October 2013 20:06, Bernd Oppolzer bernd.oppol...@t-online.de wrote:
 And: it turned out, that the P-Code is not so machine-independant
 as it should be. There will be some difficulties regarding character
 sets etc., when I try to port the compiler to an ASCII based platform,
 for example (which I would like to do in the future).

Hmmm... A case for UTF-EBCDIC as a vehicle?

Tony H.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Kirk Wolf

BTW: here's a Object-Pascal compiler based on LLVM project:
http://code.google.com/p/llvm-pascal/
(I think that there are more than one of these)

For info in LLVM:  http://llvm.org/

IBM has reportedly become more interested in LLVM for z:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=MTM1MTc

and has contributed some patches to the LLVM project (at least for C/C++
compilers):
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2013-April/061170.html

.. enough links; starting to look like a garlic.com list :-)

Kirk Wolf
Dovetailed Technologies
http://dovetail.com


On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 8:40 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:

 On 1 October 2013 20:06, Bernd Oppolzer bernd.oppol...@t-online.de
 wrote:
  Stanford PASCAL also generates P-Code in the first step,
  which in the second step is translated to 370 machine code.

 Interesting; I had thought that P-code was only interpreted.

  BTW: The P-Code of the 1982 variant of the Stanford compiler
  had been extended compared to the 1979 variant, and because
  I found only a description of the 1979 variant, it was a little bit
  complicated to find out what the new P-Code instructions do.
  There is not one P-Code, but many variants of P-Code.
 
  And: it turned out, that the P-Code is not so machine-independant
  as it should be. There will be some difficulties regarding character
  sets etc., when I try to port the compiler to an ASCII based platform,
  for example (which I would like to do in the future).

 You could instead generate JVM bytecodes... It's almost
 machine-independent.

 I haven't looked at P-code (is there an accessible overview?), but had
 heard of it long ago. When Java came out I looked at the JVM reference
 book, and thought - Oh, this isn't too complicated, I could write an
 interpreter for it in a week or so and have my own JVM. But it turns
 out that the hard part of a JVM isn't the bytecode interpreter at all;
 it's all the class loading stuff.

 I imagine the P-code system doesn't have such heavy baggage.

 Tony H.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread Clark Morris

On 1 Oct 2013 08:01:35 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 11:52:16 -0300, Clark Morris wrote:

greatest value of GOTO is the longjump; the ability to exit a
nest of not only compounds, but also blocks and function calls.
I pine for this facility in Rexx, POSIX shell, and C.
 
IBM COBOL has EXIT PROGRAM and GOBACK both of which can be used with
nested programs.  The 2002 COBOL standard has EXIT PERFORM CYCLE and
EXIT PERFORM for PERFORM loops, EXIT PARAGRAPH and EXIT SECTION.

In the following example EXIT PERFORM exits the PERFORM loop and goes
to the statement after the END-PERFROM.

EXIT PERFORM CYCLE exits current iteration and goes back to increment
X.

EXIT PARAGRAPH exits the paragraph which contains the PERFORM.

EXIT SECTION exits the section which contains the paragraph which
contains the PERFROM.

This is in the 2002 standard but NOT in current z Series COBOL.

EXIT PROGRAM will exit a nested or called program but not a main
(invoked by JCL) program.

PERFORM VARYING X FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL X = 10
  some code
  IF A-CONDITION 
EXIT PERFORM
  END-IF
  IF B-CONDITION 
EXIT PERFORM CYCLE
  END-IF
  IF C-CONDITION
EXIT PARAGRAPH
  END-IF
  IF D-CONDITION 
EXIT SECTION
  END-IF
END-PERFORM  

Clark Morris
 
Can each of these name the CYCLE, PERFORM, PARAGRAPH, or SECTION
to be EXITed in case of nesting?  (C and POSIX shell have continue,
break, and return, but these apply only to the innermost loop or call.)

Do these work alike from a separate translation unit?

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-02 Thread David Crayford


On 3/10/2013 3:35 AM, Kirk Wolf wrote:

IBM has reportedly become more interested in LLVM for z:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=MTM1MTc

and has contributed some patches to the LLVM project (at least for C/C++
compilers):
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2013-April/061170.html


That's great, LLVM is awesome. While it certainly seems to be aimed at 
zLinux it's a good base to start with.


The doxygen doco with C++ source code is here 
http://llvm.org/docs/doxygen/html/dir_d1a7a534c2883422846a0f831584280a.html.


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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
 Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin
 Sent: Monday, September 30, 2013 11:50 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

 On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:51:29 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:

 Many C dialects do support long jumps as a language extension.

 As a language extension, or via functions?  (Some purists make a
 distinction.  But it can't be done with functions without depending on
 out-of-band knowledge of the stack structure.)

 They began in PL/I where they were/are called out-of-block GOTOs.

 began only if you consider PL/I to antedate ALGOL 60, which I believe
 is contrary to history.  (And ALGOL 60 allows such label objects to be
 passed as actual parameters; I don't know about PL/I.)

 PL/I's used of contextually recognized instead of reserved words is a
 high virtue.  It is often caricatured as permitting constructs like

 declare file file record sequential buffered ;

 And the worst compromise is Rexx, wherein such words are reserved with
 the bonus of added contextual sensitivity:

 ELSE = 'id'  /* OK */
 ''ELSE/* OK */
 ELSE/* IRX0008I Error ...: Unexpected THEN or ELSE  */

I think I disagree here.  Your example seems to show a confusing language 
idiosyncrasy but in practice I have never had any problems with it.  

Rather I would say that the behavior is the least error prone - at least if you 
don't have reserved words in the, e g, COBOL sense.
COBOL is really an example of bad usage of the idea of reserved words, we have 
had several cases of the need to recode programs or area descriptions (COPYs) 
due to a field name suddenly is not allowed because it is a new reserved word.  

Best Regards
Thomas Berg
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Shane Ginnane

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 13:21:15 +0800, David Crayford wrote:

I programmed in PL/I
professionally and IMO Pascal is a far cleaner language with more
expressive features. Pascals successors, such as Module/2 and Delphi,
widen the gap even more.

I would never profess to have programmed in PL/I - I was taught it by a 
one-time employer. Did the job for a high level language in the 80's - but I 
was an assembler sysprog.
Now Delphi - that was something else again when I was looking to do some 
Windoze coding some years later. Man, that IDE was awesome, even for a 
non-Pascal guy.
Borland exes should have been shot for what they did to that business. There 
was a huge user conference in Anaheim in 1996 when I passed through in 1996. 
And they (Borland) tossed it all away.

Shane ...

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

Personally I am of the opinion that a programming language is for the benefit 
of the programmer, to be least hindered in the coding. 
It should help the coding and minimize both syntax pondering and keystrokes. 

A programming language should not have a role of disciplining the programmer.  
That should be done outside of the language, whether it be through a human 
review or using an automatic tool. 

That way the programmer could with the least effort construct a correct 
program.  If the program is not correct the additional effort caused by that is 
not exceeding what would be caused by a disciplining language in the same 
case.  

Note that a bad programmer makes bad programs regardless of the language he 
uses. 
 
If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and rough edges, 
it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax. 

2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of the code 
effort. 

3. It lives up to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). 

4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer. 



Best Regards
Thomas Berg
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org


On 1/10/2013 7:13 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote:

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 13:21:15 +0800, David Crayford wrote:


I programmed in PL/I
professionally and IMO Pascal is a far cleaner language with more
expressive features. Pascals successors, such as Module/2 and Delphi,
widen the gap even more.

I would never profess to have programmed in PL/I - I was taught it by a 
one-time employer. Did the job for a high level language in the 80's - but I was an 
assembler sysprog.
Now Delphi - that was something else again when I was looking to do some 
Windoze coding some years later. Man, that IDE was awesome, even for a 
non-Pascal guy.
Borland exes should have been shot for what they did to that business. There 
was a huge user conference in Anaheim in 1996 when I passed through in 1996. 
And they (Borland) tossed it all away.


I actually liked PL/I a lot. I much preferred it to COBOL. I remember 
reading that Fred Brooks regrets that it wasn't the systems programming 
language for OS/360. I suppose because it was a  big, complex language 
for the time it didn't quite make the cut.


I took computer studies at high school and we were taught Turbo Pascal 
and assembler on the BBC micro. The BBC was a great machine and most 
British kids
of my age cut their teeth on them! The Acorn/BBC legacy lives on today 
in ARM. The Sinclair's were just as much fun, typically eccentric 
British designs. I broke the keyboard thrashing the keys playing Daley 
Thompsons decathlon. Apples were out of our price range.


I agree wrt Delphi. It totally nuked VB for simplicity and was 
considerably faster. I've still got a copy somewhere.



Shane ...

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Shane Ginnane

If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and rough edges, 
it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax. 
2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of the code 
effort. 
3. It lives up to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). 
4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer. 

Sounds more like Perl than REXX  g,d,r

Shane ...  ;-)

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

On 1/10/2013 7:23 PM, Thomas Berg wrote:

Personally I am of the opinion that a programming language is for the benefit of the
programmer, to be least hindered in the coding.
It should help the coding and minimize both syntax pondering and keystrokes.

A programming language should not have a role of disciplining the programmer.
That should be done outside of the language, whether it be through a human
review or using an automatic tool.

That way the programmer could with the least effort construct a correct program. If the
program is not correct the additional effort caused by that is not exceeding what would
be caused by a disciplining language in the same case.

Note that a bad programmer makes bad programs regardless of the language he
uses.

If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and rough edges, it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax.

2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of the code
effort.

3. It lives up to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer.

Agreed. But there are some issues with REXX.

1. It's bloody slow! I recently ported a language that's just as simple,
more powerful and up to two orders of magnitude faster!

2. The lack of a module system is a DRY obstacle.
3. It's difficult to write external packages in a high-level language
without jumping through a lot of hoops.

Best Regards
Thomas Berg
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread John Gilmore

David Crayford wrote

begin extract
I programmed in PL/I professionally and IMO Pascal is a far cleaner
language with more expressive features
end extract/

and this is a sentiment that I marvel at.   I view Pascal as a toy, a
pedagogic language animated by very dubious principles.

What I think of Pascal and our disagreement are not themselves
important; but such differences strongly suggest that discussions of
the relative merits of different statement-level procedural languages
is an all but futile undertaking unless the context in which they are
to take place is specified in advance and in great, irksome detail.

Even then I suspect that differences of taste will make even modest
consensus impossible to achieve.

We are left with Justice Holmes's apothegm:

If you like diamonds and I like rubies we have just three options:
battle, compromise, or a jeweler who has both.

John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org


On 1/10/2013 7:51 PM, John Gilmore wrote:

David Crayford wrote

begin extract
I programmed in PL/I professionally and IMO Pascal is a far cleaner
language with more expressive features
end extract/

and this is a sentiment that I marvel at.   I view Pascal as a toy, a
pedagogic language animated by very dubious principles.


There are many versions of Pascal. Some better than others. The better 
ones are pretty damn good.

Object Pascal and Delphi are the case in point.


What I think of Pascal and our disagreement are not themselves
important; but such differences strongly suggest that discussions of
the relative merits of different statement-level procedural languages
is an all but futile undertaking unless the context in which they are
to take place is specified in advance and in great, irksome detail.

Even then I suspect that differences of taste will make even modest
consensus impossible to achieve.

We are left with Justice Holmes's apothegm:

If you like diamonds and I like rubies we have just three options:
battle, compromise, or a jeweler who has both.

John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org


On 1/10/2013 7:41 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote:

If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and rough edges, 
it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax.
2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of the code 
effort.
3. It lives up to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer.

Sounds more like Perl than REXX  g,d,r


Taking the p**s again Shane! ;-)

FWIW, Perl 6 seems to have smoothed out a lot of the rough edges.


Shane ...  ;-)

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
 Behalf Of Shane Ginnane
 Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2013 1:42 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

 If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and rough
 edges, it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

 1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax.
 2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of the
 code effort.
 3. It lives up to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
 4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer.

 Sounds more like Perl than REXX  g,d,r

 Shane ...  ;-)

H... From the little I have seen of Perl, it's like a gun pointed to your 
foot... :) 

I think I rather prefer Python. 

Best Regards
Thomas Berg
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread John McKown

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Thomas Berg thomas.b...@swedbank.se wrote:

  -Original Message-
  From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
  Behalf Of Shane Ginnane
  Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2013 1:42 PM
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

  Shane ...  ;-)

 H... From the little I have seen of Perl, it's like a gun pointed to
 your foot... :)

More like a Howitzer pointed at your foot. But, like a Howitzer, it can do
wonderful things if used by someone who knows how to (uh, not really me,
but I do like Perl)

 I think I rather prefer Python.

I'm not getting wrapped up in that discussion! grin/

 Best Regards
 Thomas Berg
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I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere.

Maranatha! 
John McKown

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
 Behalf Of David Crayford
 Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2013 1:48 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

 On 1/10/2013 7:23 PM, Thomas Berg wrote:
  Personally I am of the opinion that a programming language is for the
 benefit of the programmer, to be least hindered in the coding.
  It should help the coding and minimize both syntax pondering and
 keystrokes.

  A programming language should not have a role of disciplining the
 programmer.  That should be done outside of the language, whether it be
 through a human review or using an automatic tool.

  That way the programmer could with the least effort construct a
 correct program.  If the program is not correct the additional effort
 caused by that is not exceeding what would be caused by a disciplining
 language in the same case.

  Note that a bad programmer makes bad programs regardless of the
 language he uses.

  If I take REXX as an example, although it has its limitations and
 rough edges, it have 4 important advantages IMHO:

  1. It lives up the principle of least astonishment in syntax.

  2. Its functionality and syntax is oriented towards the end goal of
 the code effort.

  3. It lives up to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

  4. It minimizes the keystrokes for the programmer.

 Agreed. But there are some issues with REXX.

 1. It's bloody slow! I recently ported a language that's just as simple,
 more powerful and up to two orders of magnitude faster!
 2. The lack of a module system is a DRY obstacle.
 3. It's difficult to write external packages in a high-level language
 without jumping through a lot of hoops.

True, but:

0. I used it as an example of syntax and principles.

1. As I often compile it and if necessary optimize at a high level/use an 
external tool I seldom have problems with that. (To where did you port what ?  
Curious if z/OS...)  

2. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Trying to guess an answer: I use (when 
compiled) /*%INCLUDEs when practical and statically include REXX functions when 
performance is needed. 

3. Well, I suppose so, haven't tried that other than a COBOL panel exit to call 
a rexx (which of course is a bit different case).   BTW, have you an example of 
that ?  

Best Regards
Thomas Berg
___
Thomas Berg   Specialist   zOS\RQM\IT Delivery   SWEDBANK AB (Publ)

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org


On 1/10/2013 8:23 PM, Thomas Berg wrote:

True, but:

0. I used it as an example of syntax and principles.

1. As I often compile it and if necessary optimize at a high level/use an 
external tool I seldom have problems with that. (To where did you port what ?  
Curious if z/OS...)


Yes. I ported Lua to z/OS and it's lightening fast. It also supports 
multiple paradigms - procedural, OO, prototype, functional etc.


I wrote a RESTFul web server that runs DB2 queries returning JSON 
payloads in 50 lines of code.


require mercury

luasql = require( luasql.odbc )
json = require( cjson )

module( proteus, package.seeall, mercury.application )

-- create the DB2 connection
local env = luasql.odbc()
local con = assert( env:connect() )

local proteus = {}

-- generic query to list arbitrary objects
function proteus.list_query( query )
print(query)
local cur = assert( con:execute( query ) )
local rows = {}
local row = cur:fetch( {}, a )
while row do
table.insert( rows, row )
row = cur:fetch( {}, a )
end
return rows
end

-- lists proteus objects with filtering
function proteus.list_objects( params )
local query = select * from  .. params.env .. .object
if params.level then
level = params.level:upper()
query = query ..  where level = ' .. level .. '
end
if params.objtype ~= * then
objtype = params.objtype:upper()
query = query ..  and object_type = ' .. objtype .. '
end
return json.encode( proteus.list_query( query ) )
end

-- dispatchers
get( /proteus/objects/:env/,
function() return proteus.list_objects( params ) end )

get( /proteus/objects/:env/:level,
function() return proteus.list_objects( params ) end )

get( /proteus/objects/:env/:level/:objtype,
function()
p.dump(response)
p.dump(params)
return proteus.list_objects( params )
end )


2. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Trying to guess an answer: I use (when 
compiled) /*%INCLUDEs when practical and statically include REXX functions when 
performance is needed.


Copybooks are one thing, modules are another. Modules allow you to 
create instances of objects. BTW, I've got bench-tests that show 
compiled REXX can be slower

http://users.tpg.com.au/crayford/rexx-lua-c-io-benchmark.htm.


3. Well, I suppose so, haven't tried that other than a COBOL panel exit to call 
a rexx (which of course is a bit different case).   BTW, have you an example of 
that ?


I wrote a regex package for REXX that simply delegates to the C++ TR1 
regex package. It was difficult to do because I had to write assembler 
stubs to call CEEPIPI http://users.tpg.com.au/crayford/rexxre.txt.
If anybody is interested in REXX regex let me know. It's alpha status 
but more than usable. In contrast, the entire Lua I/O library is a 
couple of hundred lines of code wrapping C library calls.

To implement VSAM support was 20 lines.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Clark Morris

On 30 Sep 2013 13:26:38 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:

On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:55:14 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:

[Pascal] is much concerned to interdict practices, e.g., GOTOs or
unconditional branches, that it deems 'unstructured' or 'anarchic'.
 
Pascal has GOTO.  Dismayingly, statement labels are numeric,
perhaps a legacy of FORTRAN (and ALGOL 60).  In my opinion, the
greatest value of GOTO is the longjump; the ability to exit a
nest of not only compounds, but also blocks and function calls.
I pine for this facility in Rexx, POSIX shell, and C.

IBM COBOL has EXIT PROGRAM and GOBACK both of which can be used with
nested programs.  The 2002 COBOL standard has EXIT PERFORM CYCLE and
EXIT PERFORM for PERFORM loops, EXIT PARAGRAPH and EXIT SECTION.

Clark Morris

One could synthesize the longjump by a call to a function
declared nested in an outer function and containing only
a GOTO.  Alas, nested function declarations are out of style,
in C, Modula2, ...; possibly because of the induced requirement
that a reference to a function have two pointers; one to the
entry point, the other to the stack frame of the statically
enclosing scope.

ALGOL 60 has its warts:

o Dangling ELSE (An Unexpected Journey and a strong argument
  for strong closure).

o The requirement that an integer actual parameter contain both
  a numeric attribute and a label attribute.

o The implied comment after END coding pitfall.

o ... (Name your favorite.)

Pascal has its warts:

o The requirement to predeclare GOTO labels; a consequence
  of single-pass compilation.

o Byzantine operator precedence, most probably a consequence
  of letting the 60-bit architecture of the CDC 6600 limit the
  number of nonterminal symbols in its grammar.

o That the standard type identifiers are not reserved words.  I'm
  worried by this far less than others.  If the programmer chooses
  to redeclare integer that's his bad programming convention,
  not to be interdicted by a nanny language.

o ... (Name your favorite.)

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Paul Gilmartin

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 11:52:16 -0300, Clark Morris wrote:

greatest value of GOTO is the longjump; the ability to exit a
nest of not only compounds, but also blocks and function calls.
I pine for this facility in Rexx, POSIX shell, and C.
 
IBM COBOL has EXIT PROGRAM and GOBACK both of which can be used with
nested programs.  The 2002 COBOL standard has EXIT PERFORM CYCLE and
EXIT PERFORM for PERFORM loops, EXIT PARAGRAPH and EXIT SECTION.
 
Can each of these name the CYCLE, PERFORM, PARAGRAPH, or SECTION
to be EXITed in case of nesting?  (C and POSIX shell have continue,
break, and return, but these apply only to the innermost loop or call.)

Do these work alike from a separate translation unit?

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread John Gilmore

The PL/I leave statement is very different from the C continue and that ilk.

Consider

outer: . . . ;
  . . .
  nested: . . .  ;
. . .
innermost: . . .  ;
   . . .
   . . . leave ;  /* .leaves current group, here innnermost */
 if . . . then leave outer ;  /* leaves outer */
 else leave nested ;  /* leaves nested */
end innermost ;
. . .
  end nested ;
  if . . . then leave ;  /* leaves current group, here outer */
  . . .
end outer ;

which permit any nesting, even some unattractive ones, to be exited
from cleanly.

Paul Gilmartin will object to these [and other] uses of labels, but
they are in fact innocuous.

John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Paul Gilmartin

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 11:50:51 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:

The PL/I leave statement is very different from the C continue and that ilk.
 
But perhaps slightly less different from the C break.


Paul Gilmartin will object to these [and other] uses of labels, but
they are in fact innocuous.
 
But what if I don't?  I certainly prefer LEAVE to GOTO (less spaghetti-
prone, but it might be clearer if the label were at the end of the block
rather then the beginning).  And I'd hate to see LEAVE number of
relative nesting levels.

Does PL/I have a scheme to check matching of DO with END by
requiring that if both are labelled the labels match?  Rexx has
something like this, but the syntax is cumbersome and the
enforcement is sporadic.  (I am unsympathetic to the argument
that careful indention is a suitable alternative.)

It's unforgivable that JCL doesn't enforce matching of labels on
IF, ELSE, and ENDIF; even worse that the specification requires
(suggests?) that they be distinct if non-blank, but the
implementation doesn't enforce that.

I hate JCL!

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread John Gilmore

PL/I does check that do and end labels match, but it also permits
multiple closure, as in

gubbins: do . . . ;

  nubbins: do . . . ;

end gubbins ;  /* ends both nubbins and gubbins */

which it notes in a warning message.

The unlabeled analogue of this construction is, however, treated as an error.

Break and continue differ from leave in that their scope is always the
current unit, and this limitation much reduces their usefulness.

Dijkstra's original notions were that GOTOs were often misused and
that they were sometimes much overused, not that they should never be
used.   (The caption GOTOs considered harmful  that appeared over
his letter was added by a CACM editor.)

-- 
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

jwgli...@gmail.com (John Gilmore) writes:
 What I think of Pascal and our disagreement are not themselves
 important; but such differences strongly suggest that discussions of
 the relative merits of different statement-level procedural languages
 is an all but futile undertaking unless the context in which they are
 to take place is specified in advance and in great, irksome detail.

the IBM mainframe pascal was originally done by the IBM Los Gatos VLSI
tools group. They had been doing a lot of language work with Metaware's
TWS ... TWS reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#71 What terminology reflects the first 
computer language ?
other past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#1 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#6 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#12 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#14 Newbie question on table design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#58 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#77 CLIs and GUIs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#36 Old-school programming techniques you 
probably don't miss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#11 Microprocessors with Definable 
MIcrocode
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#54 PL/I vs. Pascal

It was used for a lot of VLSI tools before being released as product to
customers. It was then also used implementing the ibm mainframe tcp/ip
support ... I've periodically commented that it had none of the buffer
overrun and other exploits that have been epidemic in C-language based
implementations. some past posts about C-language vulnerabilities and
exploits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

there was other throughput issues with the mainframe tcp/ip (got
44kbytes/sec using 3090 processor) ... but I did the changes for
rfc1044 support and in some tuning tests at cray research got
sustained channel speed between 4341 and cray ... using only modest
amount of 4341 processor (possibly 500 times improvement in bytes
moved per instruction executed). misc. past post mentioning 1044
support
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

for the fun of it I did a rewrite in pascal of a major portion of the
VM370 kernel (done in assembler) ... and demonstrated it running
(faster) in virtual address space interacting with a smaller vm370
kernel. part of the issue was that mainframe PLI came with really
heavyweight library environment ... while Pascal could run in
effectively as an independent embedded environment. Note that this
wasn't directly a fault of PLI language ... since MIT Project MAC used
PLI language to implement the Multics operating system.
http://www.multicians.org/multics.html

the mainframe product pascal was ported to the rs/6000 ...  and
typically same pascal programs that ran on mainframe ran also on
rs/6000.

after IBM went into the red in the early 90s, IBM was cutting back all
over the place ... it transitioned to using a lot more off-the-shelf
industry VLSI design tools ... transition included transfering a lot of
internal tools to outside vendors. As part of one transfer, I got tasked
to port one 50,000+ statement vs/pascal VLSI layout program to other
vendor platforms. This was somewhat tramatic since 1) pascals on these
platforms appeared like they had never been used for much more than
univ. student instruction and 2) in one major case, the pascal support
had been outsourced to an organization 12 time zones away (I could drop
in the computer vendor hdqtrs location ... but still had to wait for
minimum 1 day turn around).

-- 
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Bernd Oppolzer


I worked with PASCAL/VS in the late 80s and early 90s and
used it a lot to do technical computations for the Stuttgart local transport
company. I built interfaces to SQL/DS (DB2 for VM in todays speak),
DMS/PANEL and GDDM - all things that were not available from IBM
in those days - and GKS (graphic kernel system), which is a device
independent library to produce graphical output for plotters as well as
for graphical displays.

This was one of the best compilers I ever worked with. I never had the
feeling to miss anything in the compiler or in the language definition.

Today I am trying to add some - more - extensions to the old Stanford 
Pascal
compiler of 1982 (running on VM/370 R6 on Hercules) with the final 
target to

make this compiler as useful as PASCAL/VS was (and maybe porting
it to more recent OSes). But this will be a long effort, because I don't 
have

much spare time.

Kind regards

Bernd



Am 01.10.2013 21:31, schrieb Anne  Lynn Wheeler:

jwgli...@gmail.com (John Gilmore) writes:

What I think of Pascal and our disagreement are not themselves
important; but such differences strongly suggest that discussions of
the relative merits of different statement-level procedural languages
is an all but futile undertaking unless the context in which they are
to take place is specified in advance and in great, irksome detail.

the IBM mainframe pascal was originally done by the IBM Los Gatos VLSI
tools group. They had been doing a lot of language work with Metaware's
TWS ... TWS reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#71 What terminology reflects the first 
computer language ?
other past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#1 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#6 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#12 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#14 Newbie question on table design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#58 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#77 CLIs and GUIs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#36 Old-school programming techniques you 
probably don't miss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#11 Microprocessors with Definable 
MIcrocode
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#54 PL/I vs. Pascal

It was used for a lot of VLSI tools before being released as product to
customers. It was then also used implementing the ibm mainframe tcp/ip
support ... I've periodically commented that it had none of the buffer
overrun and other exploits that have been epidemic in C-language based
implementations. some past posts about C-language vulnerabilities and
exploits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

there was other throughput issues with the mainframe tcp/ip (got
44kbytes/sec using 3090 processor) ... but I did the changes for
rfc1044 support and in some tuning tests at cray research got
sustained channel speed between 4341 and cray ... using only modest
amount of 4341 processor (possibly 500 times improvement in bytes
moved per instruction executed). misc. past post mentioning 1044
support
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

for the fun of it I did a rewrite in pascal of a major portion of the
VM370 kernel (done in assembler) ... and demonstrated it running
(faster) in virtual address space interacting with a smaller vm370
kernel. part of the issue was that mainframe PLI came with really
heavyweight library environment ... while Pascal could run in
effectively as an independent embedded environment. Note that this
wasn't directly a fault of PLI language ... since MIT Project MAC used
PLI language to implement the Multics operating system.
http://www.multicians.org/multics.html

the mainframe product pascal was ported to the rs/6000 ...  and
typically same pascal programs that ran on mainframe ran also on
rs/6000.

after IBM went into the red in the early 90s, IBM was cutting back all
over the place ... it transitioned to using a lot more off-the-shelf
industry VLSI design tools ... transition included transfering a lot of
internal tools to outside vendors. As part of one transfer, I got tasked
to port one 50,000+ statement vs/pascal VLSI layout program to other
vendor platforms. This was somewhat tramatic since 1) pascals on these
platforms appeared like they had never been used for much more than
univ. student instruction and 2) in one major case, the pascal support
had been outsourced to an organization 12 time zones away (I could drop
in the computer vendor hdqtrs location ... but still had to wait for
minimum 1 day turn around).



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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread efinnell15

What's the difference in Stanford and UCSD versions?



In a message dated 10/01/13 15:05:31 Central Daylight Time, 
bernd.oppol...@t-online.de writes:
Today I am trying to add some - more - extensions to the old Stanford 
Pascal 
compiler of 1982 (running on VM/370 R6 on Hercules) with the final 
target to 

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Bernd Oppolzer

I don't know much about UCSD, but AFAIK this is a small PASCAL 
implementation

for microcomputers. The Stanford compiler was a port of the P4 compiler of
Niklaus Wirth to the IBM mainframe with some extensions. I took the 1982 
version
from the McGill University (from the MUSIC/SP system), ported it to 
VM/370 R6
(on Hercules) and made some extensions to it, including new control 
statements

BREAK, CONTINUE and RETURN.

Kind regards

Bernd



Am 01.10.2013 22:36, schrieb efinnell15:

What's the difference in Stanford and UCSD versions?



In a message dated 10/01/13 15:05:31 Central Daylight Time, 
bernd.oppol...@t-online.de writes:
Today I am trying to add some - more - extensions to the old Stanford
Pascal
compiler of 1982 (running on VM/370 R6 on Hercules) with the final
target to

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread efinnell15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal



In a message dated 10/01/13 17:42:33 Central Daylight Time, 
bernd.oppol...@t-online.de writes:
I don't know much about UCSD, but AFAIK this is a small PASCAL 
implementation 

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Bernd Oppolzer


Thank you.

Stanford PASCAL also generates P-Code in the first step,
which in the second step is translated to 370 machine code.

And: Urs Ammann, who is mentioned in the UCSD article
as the creator of the P-code interpreter, which was the origin
of the UCSD pascal system, is one of the authors of the Pascal P4
compiler, too, which was the origin of the Stanford compiler.
So there must be many similarities, I guess.

BTW: The P-Code of the 1982 variant of the Stanford compiler
had been extended compared to the 1979 variant, and because
I found only a description of the 1979 variant, it was a little bit 
complicated

to find out what the new P-Code instructions do. There is not one
P-Code, but many variants of P-Code.

And: it turned out, that the P-Code is not so machine-independant
as it should be. There will be some difficulties regarding character
sets etc., when I try to port the compiler to an ASCII based platform,
for example (which I would like to do in the future).

Kind regards

Bernd



Am 02.10.2013 01:25, schrieb efinnell15:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal



In a message dated 10/01/13 17:42:33 Central Daylight Time, 
bernd.oppol...@t-online.de writes:
I don't know much about UCSD, but AFAIK this is a small PASCAL
implementation

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-10-01 Thread Tony Harminc

On 1 October 2013 20:06, Bernd Oppolzer bernd.oppol...@t-online.de wrote:
 Stanford PASCAL also generates P-Code in the first step,
 which in the second step is translated to 370 machine code.

Interesting; I had thought that P-code was only interpreted.

 BTW: The P-Code of the 1982 variant of the Stanford compiler
 had been extended compared to the 1979 variant, and because
 I found only a description of the 1979 variant, it was a little bit
 complicated to find out what the new P-Code instructions do.
 There is not one P-Code, but many variants of P-Code.

 And: it turned out, that the P-Code is not so machine-independant
 as it should be. There will be some difficulties regarding character
 sets etc., when I try to port the compiler to an ASCII based platform,
 for example (which I would like to do in the future).

You could instead generate JVM bytecodes... It's almost machine-independent.

I haven't looked at P-code (is there an accessible overview?), but had
heard of it long ago. When Java came out I looked at the JVM reference
book, and thought - Oh, this isn't too complicated, I could write an
interpreter for it in a week or so and have my own JVM. But it turns
out that the hard part of a JVM isn't the bytecode interpreter at all;
it's all the class loading stuff.

I imagine the P-code system doesn't have such heavy baggage.

Tony H.

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Mike Schwab

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)#History


On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Gerhard,
 I wonder why the government chose Ada...?

 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 from my IPAD

 'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'


 On Sep 29, 2013, at 10:09 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh...@valley.net wrote:

 On 9/29/2013 9:45 PM, John McKown wrote:
 is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
 for either of them being the one language to rule them all.

 While I don't know what the current status is, there was at one time an 
 edict that all U.S. Government work had to be done with Ada. A friend of 
 mine spent almost as much time finding compiler (and language definition) 
 problems as doing coding.

 Gerhard Postpischil
 Bradford, Vermont

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-- 
Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread David Crayford


On 30/09/2013 2:11 PM, Mike Schwab wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)#History



There is no doubt that Ada is a much, much better programming language 
then PL/I, C, COBOL etc. It's lack of popularity is probably due to

the substantial inertia of it's peers, ala Betamax vs VHS.


On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:

Gerhard,
I wonder why the government chose Ada...?

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD

'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'



On Sep 29, 2013, at 10:09 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh...@valley.net wrote:


On 9/29/2013 9:45 PM, John McKown wrote:
is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
for either of them being the one language to rule them all.

While I don't know what the current status is, there was at one time an edict 
that all U.S. Government work had to be done with Ada. A friend of mine spent 
almost as much time finding compiler (and language definition) problems as 
doing coding.

Gerhard Postpischil
Bradford, Vermont

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Scott Ford

David,
I am not familiar with Ada, interesting have written C,Cobol,PL/1 . ADA like 
other languages sounds like it has it strengths.

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD

'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'


 On Sep 30, 2013, at 2:25 AM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 On 30/09/2013 2:11 PM, Mike Schwab wrote:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)#History
 
 There is no doubt that Ada is a much, much better programming language then 
 PL/I, C, COBOL etc. It's lack of popularity is probably due to
 the substantial inertia of it's peers, ala Betamax vs VHS.
 
 On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Gerhard,
 I wonder why the government chose Ada...?
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 from my IPAD
 
 'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'
 
 
 On Sep 29, 2013, at 10:09 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh...@valley.net 
 wrote:
 
 On 9/29/2013 9:45 PM, John McKown wrote:
 is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
 for either of them being the one language to rule them all.
 While I don't know what the current status is, there was at one time an 
 edict that all U.S. Government work had to be done with Ada. A friend of 
 mine spent almost as much time finding compiler (and language definition) 
 problems as doing coding.
 
 Gerhard Postpischil
 Bradford, Vermont
 
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Lloyd Fuller

Actually in some circles ADA is the ONLY language.  Talk to the embedded 
systems people.  Unless things have changed quite a bit in the past 6 years or 
so, ADA is heavily used in airplanes, etc.

Lloyd

 From: John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

I guess that good to know. And I can sort of see it, from what little I
remember of Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and a brief flirtation with Modula II.
I've only had the GCC Ada compiler, and I don't really know how standard it
is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
for either of them being the one language to rule them all. On z/OS,
COBOL still seems to be King (at least in terms of number of lines of
customer code). On UNIX, C/C++ seems to still the be the main winner, but
with a large retinue of others (Perl, Python, Ruby, ...). On Windows, well
I plead ignorance and apathy: I don't know and I don't care. I despise
MS-Windows. As is likely well known by now.

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 8:46 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) 
shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote:

 In
 caajsdjhovrtxbmxk+bhdqwookpp7_h3z4mtthsyoyzyjfnj...@mail.gmail.com,
 on 09/26/2013
    at 09:10 AM, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com said:

 Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk. -- Codoso diBlini

 Actually Ada comes from the Pascal tradition and is quite at variance
 with PL/I.

 --
      Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
      ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html
 We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
 (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere.

Maranatha! 
John McKown

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Mike Schwab

Pascal is like an improved PL/I, Ada is an improved Pascal.

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 8:13 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
 David,
 I am not familiar with Ada, interesting have written C,Cobol,PL/1 . ADA like 
 other languages sounds like it has it strengths.

 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 from my IPAD

 'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'


 On Sep 30, 2013, at 2:25 AM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 30/09/2013 2:11 PM, Mike Schwab wrote:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)#History

 There is no doubt that Ada is a much, much better programming language then 
 PL/I, C, COBOL etc. It's lack of popularity is probably due to
 the substantial inertia of it's peers, ala Betamax vs VHS.

 On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com 
 wrote:
 Gerhard,
 I wonder why the government chose Ada...?

 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 from my IPAD

 'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'


 On Sep 29, 2013, at 10:09 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh...@valley.net 
 wrote:

 On 9/29/2013 9:45 PM, John McKown wrote:
 is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
 for either of them being the one language to rule them all.
 While I don't know what the current status is, there was at one time an 
 edict that all U.S. Government work had to be done with Ada. A friend of 
 mine spent almost as much time finding compiler (and language definition) 
 problems as doing coding.

 Gerhard Postpischil
 Bradford, Vermont

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-- 
Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Robert Prins


On 2013-09-30 16:40, Mike Schwab wrote:

Pascal is like an improved PL/I, Ada is an improved Pascal.


I would rather say that Pascal is a very inferior copy of PL/I.

Robert
--
Robert AH Prins
robert(a)prino(d)org



On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 8:13 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:

David,
I am not familiar with Ada, interesting have written C,Cobol,PL/1 . ADA like 
other languages sounds like it has it strengths.

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD

'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'



On Sep 30, 2013, at 2:25 AM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote:


On 30/09/2013 2:11 PM, Mike Schwab wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)#History


There is no doubt that Ada is a much, much better programming language then 
PL/I, C, COBOL etc. It's lack of popularity is probably due to
the substantial inertia of it's peers, ala Betamax vs VHS.


On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
Gerhard,
I wonder why the government chose Ada...?

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD

'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'



On Sep 29, 2013, at 10:09 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh...@valley.net wrote:

On 9/29/2013 9:45 PM, John McKown wrote:
is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
for either of them being the one language to rule them all.

While I don't know what the current status is, there was at one time an edict 
that all U.S. Government work had to be done with Ada. A friend of mine spent 
almost as much time finding compiler (and language definition) problems as 
doing coding.





--
Robert AH Prins
robert(a)prino(d)org

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Clark Morris

On 29 Sep 2013 22:13:02 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:

John,
Yeah, there are still a ton of Cobol shops and not many young bucks and does 
wanting to learn it ..sorry play on words

There may be a ton of shops but are there paying jobs in them or have
they been outsourced to lower wage areas?

Clark Morris

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD

'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'


 On Sep 29, 2013, at 9:45 PM, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 I guess that good to know. And I can sort of see it, from what little I
 remember of Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and a brief flirtation with Modula II.
 I've only had the GCC Ada compiler, and I don't really know how standard it
 is. But I don't think that Ada took off any better than PL/I did. So much
 for either of them being the one language to rule them all. On z/OS,
 COBOL still seems to be King (at least in terms of number of lines of
 customer code). On UNIX, C/C++ seems to still the be the main winner, but
 with a large retinue of others (Perl, Python, Ruby, ...). On Windows, well
 I plead ignorance and apathy: I don't know and I don't care. I despise
 MS-Windows. As is likely well known by now.
 
 
 On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 8:46 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) 
 shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote:
 
 In
 caajsdjhovrtxbmxk+bhdqwookpp7_h3z4mtthsyoyzyjfnj...@mail.gmail.com,
 on 09/26/2013
   at 09:10 AM, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com said:
 
 Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk. -- Codoso diBlini
 
 Actually Ada comes from the Pascal tradition and is quite at variance
 with PL/I.
 
 --
 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
 ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html
 We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
 (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
 
 --
 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
 send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
 
 
 
 -- 
 I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere.
 
 Maranatha! 
 John McKown
 
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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Pew, Curtis G

On Sep 30, 2013, at 4:11 PM, Robert Prins robert.ah.pr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Pascal is like an improved PL/I, Ada is an improved Pascal.
 
 I would rather say that Pascal is a very inferior copy of PL/I.

Pascal was written by Niklaus Wirth as a teaching language to instruct 
programmers in the principles of structured programming. PL/I was developed by 
an IBM team to be the one language to rule them all, replacing COBOL for 
business programming and FORTRAN for scientific programming. Neither is a copy 
of the other, although both were heavily influenced by Algol.

Bu then, almost all languages developed after Algol were heavily influenced by 
it. Tony Hoare once said, The amazing thing about Algol was it was such an 
improvement over most of its successors.

-- 
Curtis Pew (c@its.utexas.edu)
ITS Systems Core
The University of Texas at Austin

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Chris Hoelscher

I remember in the fall of 1975 taking a PL/I class at THE Ohio State 
University - the instructor was confident that by 1980 - COBOL and Fortran 
would not exist outside of museums ...PL/I was THAT good ...

(and he MIGHT have been right - had there not been such an overwhelming legacy 
of code in both languages bu 1975 - which cost to convert overwhelmed whatever 
savings the ease and efficiency of PL/I provided ...)




Chris hoelscher
Technology Architect | Database Infrastructure Services
Technology Solution Services

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

I would amend Curtis Pew's language with just one word, that shown in
majuscules below

Pascal was writtern by Niklaus Wirth as a teaching langjuage to
instruct NOVICE programmers in the principles of structured
programming.

It is much concerned to interdict practices, e.g., GOTOs or
unconditional branches, that it deems 'unstructured' or 'anarchic'.

Opinions still differ sharply---There has been no design
convergence---on what an optimal programming language is.  We do,
however, know one thing: Requiring students to use a nanny language,
be it Pascal or Smalltalk, to pick two very different ones, does not
teach them to be good programmers.  They can and usually do write
opaque, turgid routines in both.

-- 
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread David Andrews

On Mon, 2013-09-30 at 19:40 +, Pew, Curtis G wrote:
 Tony Hoare once said, The amazing thing about Algol was it was such
 an improvement over most of its successors.

Not having a defined I/O facility didn't help Algol.  An undergraduate
prof of mine (George Haynam, did the SDS Algol 60 compiler) claimed that
this was the source of Algol's unpopularity in the US.  Maybe he was
right.

-- 
David Andrews
A. Duda  Sons, Inc.
david.andr...@duda.com

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Gross, Randall [PRI-1PP]

ALGOL was the first high-level language I learned, on a Burroughs B5500.  

I liked it a lot, except that it was special character happy, using the full 
64-character set found on the model 029  129 keypunches.

The college only had four 029's (that students could use) but they had a bunch 
of model 026, 48 character set keypunches all over campus.  

Most of us got to be very good at multi-punching

The best learning language I ever ran across was COMAL...


Randy 

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of David Andrews
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2013 4:12 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

On Mon, 2013-09-30 at 19:40 +, Pew, Curtis G wrote:
 Tony Hoare once said, The amazing thing about Algol was it was such 
 an improvement over most of its successors.

Not having a defined I/O facility didn't help Algol.  An undergraduate prof of 
mine (George Haynam, did the SDS Algol 60 compiler) claimed that this was the 
source of Algol's unpopularity in the US.  Maybe he was right.

--
David Andrews
A. Duda  Sons, Inc.
david.andr...@duda.com

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Paul Gilmartin

On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:55:14 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:

[Pascal] is much concerned to interdict practices, e.g., GOTOs or
unconditional branches, that it deems 'unstructured' or 'anarchic'.
 
Pascal has GOTO.  Dismayingly, statement labels are numeric,
perhaps a legacy of FORTRAN (and ALGOL 60).  In my opinion, the
greatest value of GOTO is the longjump; the ability to exit a
nest of not only compounds, but also blocks and function calls.
I pine for this facility in Rexx, POSIX shell, and C.

One could synthesize the longjump by a call to a function
declared nested in an outer function and containing only
a GOTO.  Alas, nested function declarations are out of style,
in C, Modula2, ...; possibly because of the induced requirement
that a reference to a function have two pointers; one to the
entry point, the other to the stack frame of the statically
enclosing scope.

ALGOL 60 has its warts:

o Dangling ELSE (An Unexpected Journey and a strong argument
  for strong closure).

o The requirement that an integer actual parameter contain both
  a numeric attribute and a label attribute.

o The implied comment after END coding pitfall.

o ... (Name your favorite.)

Pascal has its warts:

o The requirement to predeclare GOTO labels; a consequence
  of single-pass compilation.

o Byzantine operator precedence, most probably a consequence
  of letting the 60-bit architecture of the CDC 6600 limit the
  number of nonterminal symbols in its grammar.

o That the standard type identifiers are not reserved words.  I'm
  worried by this far less than others.  If the programmer chooses
  to redeclare integer that's his bad programming convention,
  not to be interdicted by a nanny language.

o ... (Name your favorite.)

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

Many C dialects do support long jumps as a language extension.

They began in PL/I where they were/are called out-of-block GOTOs.
PL/I's used of contextually recognized instead of reserved words is a
high virtue.  It is often caricatured as permitting constructs like

declare file file record sequential buffered ;

which does indeed declare a file named file.  Its real virtues are
that it facilitates language growth without nasty side effects and
makes language extensions, assuming the availability of a suitably
powerful macro preprocessor, easy.

The confusion of popularity with quality is misleading.  There may
even be an inverse relationship between language popularity and
language quality, although unpopularity is not an attribute that
should be sought after as such.

John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

The problem with the absence of I/O facilities in ALGOL 60 was not
perhaps their absence per se as that what was invariably picked up and
used to make good this deficiency was FORTRAN I/O.

-- 
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org

2013-09-30 Thread Paul Gilmartin

On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:51:29 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:

Many C dialects do support long jumps as a language extension.

As a language extension, or via functions?  (Some purists make a
distinction.  But it can't be done with functions without depending
on out-of-band knowledge of the stack structure.)

They began in PL/I where they were/are called out-of-block GOTOs.

began only if you consider PL/I to antedate ALGOL 60, which I believe
is contrary to history.  (And ALGOL 60 allows such label objects to be
passed as actual parameters; I don't know about PL/I.)

PL/I's used of contextually recognized instead of reserved words is a
high virtue.  It is often caricatured as permitting constructs like

declare file file record sequential buffered ;

And the worst compromise is Rexx, wherein such words are reserved
with the bonus of added contextual sensitivity:

ELSE = 'id'  /* OK */
''ELSE/* OK */
ELSE/* IRX0008I Error ...: Unexpected THEN or ELSE  */

-- gil

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Re: Quote on Slashdot.org