Re: Is Ada likely to survive ?

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (robin) writes:

>ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:

>	>rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (robin) writes:
>	>>It's one of the enduring success stories.  The features
>	>>in PL/I were so advanced that the language didn't need continual
>	>>updating over the years (like some other languages did !).

>	>Maybe it didn't _need_ it, but PL/I has certainly _received_ quite
>	>a bit of updating.

>Please read what I wrote.  I said that it dodn't need continual updating.

I WAS NOT ATTACKING PL/I.  I thought that others might misinterpret
your posting as saying that PL/I has not changed.

However, now that you are quibbling over 'continual', few standardised
languages have received 'continual' updating.  Fortran 66, Fortran 77,
Fortran 90:  three standards in thirty years isn't 'continual'.  Ada 83,
Ada 95, that's 12 years between changes, not 'continual'.  C9X will
probably be 10 years after C89, which isn't 'continual' change either.

>Many of these were important / significant new features, and were new
>to any general-purpose language at the time [e.g. list processing,
>controlled storage allocation, direct access files, macro-processor).

What's the relative order of PL/I and Algol W?  Algol W had list processing
and controlled storage allocation.  What's the relative timing of the
PL/I macro processor and the Burroughs Algol preprocessor?  And what's the
relative order of CPL and PL/I?  (The GPM macro processor, ancestor of M4,
was written as part of the CPL project.  Yes it was a separate program.)

>	>  Even compare it with the MVS PL/I compiler of 1989 (the
>	>last time I saw an MVS PL/I manual) and you'll notice a lot of additions.

>You know I know this.  I loaned you the OS/2 PL/I manual -- recall?

Yes, I do.  That's how _I_ know that the language has changed, and how
I know that essentially none of the PL/I code I ever had would work under
OS/2 PL/I.  (Hint:  ANSI PL/I and IBM PL/I use _different_ rules for
interpreting fixed point arithmetic, and I used PL/I on non-IBM machines.)

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Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.