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From: Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu>
Subject: Re: Ada versus PL/I (was: Re: Ariane 5 - not an exception?)
Date: 1996/08/31
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.92.960831192310.8449A-100000@nunic.nu.edu>#1/1
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Date: 1996-08-31T00:00:00+00:00
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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.
>
> 	>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.

>
> 	> I could go into detail about the model
> 	>  for pointers,
>
> ---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.

> 	> 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.

> 	>  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.

  Richard Riehle