Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!artecon!sceard!mrm
From: mrm@sceard.UUCP (M.R.Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors
Message-ID: <822@sceard.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 88 18:36:20 GMT
References: <584@auvax.UUCP> <847@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrm@sceard.UUCP (0040-M.R.Murphy)
Distribution: na
Organization: Sceard Systems, Inc., Carlsbad, CA  92009
Lines: 31
Keywords: FORTRAN, c, Pl/1

In article <847@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>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
[more stuff deleted...]
>
[more stuff deleted...]
>There is an extremely good reason for using C rather than PL/I,
>and it is the same reason that someone would use F77 rather than F8X:
>it is important for a programmer to be able to master his tools, and
>PL/I is extremely hard to understand.  (Need I mention the 22/7 bug?)
>{It is very easy to _think_ you understand PL/I, but when you consider
>tasking, the 'abnormal' attribute, label parameters, ONSOURCE, ...}
>F77 has one extremely great virtue which almost compensates for its
>defects:  ordinary mortals can master the whole language.
PL/I has lots of different ways of saying the same thing. So does C.
So does F77. PL/I is available on machines from not so very many
manufacturers. C is available on machines from very many manufacturers.
F77 (or F66) is available on LOTS of machines from LOTS of manufacturers.
I have two 60000+ line systems written in PL/I that I would like to port
to machines other than the IBM Series/1 for which they were written in
Pl/I (with a compiler that runs in a 26kb partition :-). Any suggestions?
Will I design any other large systems with PL/I as the implementation
language and use all the neat features of the language to make the code
short, readable, and non-portable? Not likely, even though I liked the
language.
-- Mike

-- 
Mike Murphy  Sceard Systems, Inc.  6353C El Camino Real  Carlsbad, CA  92009
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