Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!gargoyle!oddjob!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors
Keywords: FORTRAN, c, Pl/1
Message-ID: <10896@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 2 Apr 88 04:43:42 GMT
References: <584@auvax.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 26

In article <584@auvax.UUCP> willis@auvax.UUCP (Tony Willis) writes:
>I think you people who were debating the relative merits of FORTRAN vs C
>should go off and learn PL/1! Let's face facts: PL/1 offers pretty well
>all the features of C ...; on the other hand PL/1 offers all the features
>of FORTRAN ....

>Soo, how come PL/1 never became more popular (at least in North
>America - it did become fairly popular in Europe where it was designed).

Because it also offers all the features of many other things:

>The answer would seem that a language which has "everything" just
>becomes so large and bulky that good compilers were difficult to
>design and implement.

Probably true.  Perhaps more important, however, is that the language
is so large that very few people become well versed in all of it.
(Quick, what happens if I convert a FIXED BINARY(12,5) to a FIXED
DECIMAL(8,7) [if I got the syntax right; I have never used PL/I, just
a subset, and only twice or so]?  How about `DO I=1, I=5'?)  What
happens is that people pick a subset of PL/I and write in that subset;
different people have different subsets and find they are unable
to maintain each others' code.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris