From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,751d508677a5add1 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!npeer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad.highwinds-media.com!newsfe21.iad.POSTED!1d9d5bd3!not-for-mail From: David Thompson Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: [Ada] made me hate programming Organization: Poor Message-ID: References: <6KDPK04Y40360.2153472222@reece.net.au> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 3.3/32.846 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@teranews.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:36:59 UTC Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:37:29 -0400 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:12209 Date: 2010-07-06T01:37:29-04:00 List-Id: On 30 Jun 2010 21:10:06 -0000, Kulin Remailer wrote: > > I remember this when I was young. For some reason, students > > get real hung up on compile time errors. It's like they are > > horses bouncing around inside the gate, waiting for the door > > to open. > > That was the questionable thinking behind a hilarious variant of PL/I > called PL/C, Cornell University's PL/I compiler. Students just want their > programs to compile and run, don't bother them with details like whether > it's correct or not. Not a good assumption but...it was enough for somebody > or some group of people to put out a pretty interesting compiler and get it > out there in academia, circa late 70s early 80s timeframe. > Earlier. My school was using it in '75, and it wasn't treated as new. Wikipedia says it was published on in '73, and on concrete things like that I apply fewer grains of salt to them. > The purpose of PL/C was to take almost any input and hammer it until it > looked like a PL/I program, compile it, and generate an executable from > it. It certainly may not do what you intended, but by george, the damn > thing will almost always start running. What happens next...nobody knows. > In the days of 4 or 8 hour or even longer batch turnarounds, trying to correct errors as PL/C did, and WATFIV for FORTRAN, was useful. Yes, they didn't always guess right, but if you had made a few small mistakes keypunching it might save you a day or more. > It was hysterical to look closely at the diagnostics. I don't have a > listing handy but I remember it would be something like > > Error on line ... (note the syntax error) > PL/C uses .... (what PL/C replaced your erroneous statement with) > > If I had a dime for every cup of coffee that went out my nose working with > that compiler! Actually it could have been a very interesting aspect of AI > if they had intentions in that direction but I don't think it went any > further and I haven't seen anything like it since. > My favorite was one time I was bored and gave it an empty source, and it constructed a complete program; from vague memory something like: * PROC statement missing inserted * PROC label missing added * END PROC statement missing added * main PROC doesn't have OPTIONS added * PROC contains no statement added * running ... * dummy statement executed, execution stopped But compared to IBM's ZYX9942E Invalid construct somewhere near X (especially for JCL) this was manna from heaven.