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From: rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (++           robin)
Subject: Re: Ada versus PL/I (was: Re: Ariane 5 - not an exception?)
Date: 1996/09/02
Message-ID: <50dkud$t7h@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 177913926
expires: 1 November 1996 00:00:00 GMT
references: <Pine.GSO.3.92.960831192310.8449A-100000@nunic.nu.edu>
organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1
nntp-posting-user: rav
Date: 1996-09-02T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


	Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu> writes:

	>On 22 Aug 1996, ++           robin wrote:

	>> Richard Riehle wrote:
	>>
	>> 	>  I have programmed in PL/I (when it was still PL/1)
	>> ---PL/I has always been "PL/I".  From the first
	>> implementation to the introduction of the standard, to now.

	>  Though I do not have them at hand, I recall some early IBM
	>  documents which referred to PL/1 after it changed its name
	>  from NPL.

---The first edition c. 1966 of IBM's PL/I Reference Manual
for the S/360 (PL/I-F compiler) called it "PL/I".

	>> 	>as well as
	>> 	>  Ada. I not the slightest doubt about the improvement of PL/I
	>> 	>  over its predecessors.  However, Ada is clearly superior to
	>> 	>  PL/I as a software engineering language. It is even a better
	>> 	>  programming language.
	>>
	>> ---Not really, when people have to ask how to do
	>> a square root [in Ada].

	>  No serious Ada programmer has to ask such a question.

---In Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, Algol, PL/I, Turbo C, you just
use it [SQRT].  Nothing special needed.

	>> ---You seem not to be aware of the DEFINE STRUCTURE
	>> statement and the strongly-typed pointer facilities of
	>> PL/I for Windows 95/NT, OS/2 and AIX.

	>  I used PL/I long before Bill Gates heard of a computer. The
	>  PL/I I remember supported some rather scary notions of type
	>  flexibility, not appropriate for safety-critical systems. For
	>  example, implicit type conversions, etc.

---There have been some changes since then . . .

	>> 	> or the frailty of the DO WHILE construct, but
	>>
	>> ---DO WHILE is one of the structured constructs.

	>  Yes it is. Too bad it also permits assignment to the loop
	>  control variable, among other things.

A DO WHILE construct doesn't have a control variable.

	>> 	>  On the other hand, I would rather see people using PL/I for
	>> 	>  a serious project than C.  And I have heard there is an effort
	>> 	>  to release an Object-oriented version of PL/I in the near
	>> 	>  future.  That might actually make PL/I a viable alternative
	>> 	>  to C++.
	>>
	>> ---It already is.

	>  Not unless if does not explicitly support object-oriented
	>  programming.  And OOP kludges do not count.

---we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

	>  Richard Riehle