Re: PL/I

I thought C was a double-edged sword... with no handle. Isn't it?

So, Bruce, who sells a native Windows 9x/NT PL/I compiler? Is there a GNU
version, perhaps?

Bob Cozzi
www.rpgiv.com


----- Original Message -----
From: R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr. <rbruceh@ibm.net>
To: <RPG400-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 1999 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: PL/I


> Colin Williams wrote:
> >
> > Many people seem to mention how good PL/I is/was.
> >
> > If so, what happened to it (It was before my time)?
>
> No. Not before your time. It exists on every platform (even the 400),
> but on the 400 it is not a full LP. It is not ILE on the 400 either.
>
> How good is/was it? Consider that Synon used it to build their entire
> product.
>
> The language is unique. It came about as an offshoot from SHARE. The
> language doesn't give a rip about what support the hardware provides.
> Everything is supported in the code and may or may not be optimized for
> the particular platform. Hence the floating support even when the S/38
> did not have floating processors. The language can do stream or record
> IO, string manipulations, had pointers and dynamic memory allocation,
> strong control structure support, etc...
>
> It was the Swiss Army Knife of languages.
>
> C is a scalpel.
>
> C++ is a double edged razor blade, you can cut some fine detail, but you
> are going to cut yourself in the process.
>
>
> --
> ===========================================================
> R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
>  -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional System Administrator
>  -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional Network Administrator
>
> "The sum of all human knowledge is a fixed constant.
>     It's the population that keeps growing!"
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