Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.realtime
Subject: Re: Searching for realtime languages
Message-ID: <14364@bfmny0.UUCP>
Date: 30 May 89 03:56:18 GMT
References: <699@tuvie> <2100@internal.Apple.COM> <14355@bfmny0.UUCP> <26614@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Distribution: all
Organization: ^
Lines: 30

In article <26614@watmath.waterloo.edu> sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan) writes:
>I've had only one, brief, painful experience with PL/M, and I'd never
>touch it again.  This is mostly because I'm a long-time C hacker, and
>where ever there was a design choice to be made, the PL/M creators
>seem to have gone out of there way to choose the OPPOSITE one that C
>did.  I suppose that it's not that bad a programming language, but it
>made my brain HURT to try to write & debugg code using it.

PL/M wasn't really designed in the sense Crispin means.  Its syntax was
adapted from PL/I Subset which was an afterthought to IBM's PL/I (born
at the 1967 Vienna Conference as PL/C), i.e., a classic ALGOL-derived
block structured language.  Subset was supposed to run on advanced state
of the art computers like the 1130! that lacked the capacity for the huge
gut busting formatted I/O packages that full PL/I wanted.  It retained the
block structure and the main data types.  Digital (I believe) did the
original adaptation for the 8080 in 1978 or 1979 and Intel OEM'd an early
version and took it over, releasing their own for the 8086 in 1980 or 81.
Since then it has kept pace with the evolving x86 architecture, expanding
its data types and adding hardware builtins as needed.  PL/M-486 should be
out very shortly, I know Intel is using it internally.

I can see where a dyed in the wool C hacker might balk at PL/M's heavily
keyword oriented and Algolish feel, but IMHO no true systems person should
be that much a slave of one language.  I have lived through everything from
FORTRAN II to BLISS to C to FORTH to PL/M to Apple Integer Basic and many
more, and I like to tell myself I will be there typin' away when the NEXT
revolution rolls around.  Just give me a terminal and a deadline... :-)
-- 
Tom Neff				UUCP:     ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
    "Truisms aren't everything."	Internet: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET