On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 08:05:50 -0400, Phillip Rhodes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > len boyle wrote: > > > > > Mike is known in the old world as the author of Rexx and NetRexx See > > his web page listed on the jcp page for many refs beyond java. Matt you > > will like this site. > > > > http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/ > > Interesting... what are the odds of two references to Rexx coming up > on the Tri-LUG list, on the same day, in pretty much completely > un-related contexts? > > It's a weird world we live in... :-)
Weirder than you suspect, I'll bet. And smaller. :-) As it turns out, the President of the Rexx Language Association is a proud member of TriLUG, lives in SW Wake County, and would be at the meeting tonight were it not for the crush of work that has been created by IBM's transfer of Object REXX to the Open Source community. And no, Mike Cowlishaw is not retiring, although he has the honor of being not only a long-time IBMer, but one of the longest-tenured IBM Fellows (no small feat when you have to come up with something brilliant every 2-3 years to justify your position). For instance, Mike was the guy who convinced Lou Gerstner to invest $1G in Java in the first place. Mike wrote the first IBM port of Sun's Java to an IBM platform (OS/2 of course) and then (since he didn't have anything to do over the Christmas holiday) he designed and implemented NetRexx, an object-oriented Rexx for the JVM. The first version of NetRexx was written in Rexx, the second in NetRexx. (So much for the "Rexx is just an old mainframe scripting language" drivel.) To keep this OT, the Java Decimal class was a "sorta-decimal" implementation, so Mike wrote a true decimal arithmetic class (BigDecimal) for Java which is now part of the base distribution. BigDecimal is simply an implementation of the arithmetic defined by the ANSI X3J18-1996 Standard for the Rexx programming language which offers infinitely variable precision and avoids all the "decimal anomalies" previously mentioned. IBM thought this was such a benefit that for the last couple of years Mike has been working on implementing Rexx decimal arithmetic on the chip. (Watch for it to come to an IBM processor near you!) Which allows me to respond to the naif who opined that "I don't think BCD is found much these days". Jeremy does not appear to be aware that there are _billions_ of lines of S/360/370/390/zSeries code still in use out there. An great deal of it is written in IBM Assembler, which is one of the languages (with Rexx, BTW) that I make a living teaching. I cover BCD (packed arithmetic, actually) on the second day. And to follow-up on another post, yes there is a movement afoot to get IBM to open-source OS/2, but it's very complicated and delicate, and far from a sure thing (having a lot to do with certain pieces of Microsoft IP, as you might suspect). BTW, the Linux version of Object REXX was written by another IBMer who now lives in Apex. If any of you might be interested in contributing to the Open-source Object REXX (OORexx) effort, please feel free to contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and I'll put you int touch with the development team. May the PARSE be with you, -Chip Davis- President, RexxLA www.rexxla.org -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
