tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5135517.post117044886537513472..comments2023-11-05T03:54:44.710-08:00Comments on Making it stick.: PL/IPatrick Loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02088461489050417591noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5135517.post-1170486778819164172007-02-02T23:12:00.000-08:002007-02-02T23:12:00.000-08:00Gary Kildall wrote one or more PL/I (subset) compi...Gary Kildall wrote one or more PL/I (subset) compilers for micros (8080 and, later, 8086). Later, PL/M was a descendent -- a smaller, simpler language but with somewhat similar syntax -- heavily used at Digital Research on the Operating Systems that were CP/M's descendents. Search "Gary Kildall" "PL/I compiler" will yield pointers to start some research, if desired.<BR/><BR/>Seems to me that PL/I lost out to COBOL for many of the same reasons that Ada lost out to C++ fifteen to twenty years later. PL/I was seen as this huge, complex beast of a language, with everyone's favorite kitchen sink thrown in, while COBOL was already pervasive, a necessary evil. COBOL's complexities didn't seem to matter as much, because they were already familiar.<BR/><BR/>PL/I had some funky features that were seen as difficult to implement at the time -- "on conditions", an early form of exceptions; and arbitrary user-specified data/word-size precision, with a zillion rules about how differently-sized variables would combine.<BR/><BR/>(Historical note: Some of my first real programs were written in PL/I, and run on one or the other of the IBM-360/91's at UCLA, around 1968. Also, I worked at Digital Research from 1984 to 1986, the most amusing aspect of which was that they still considered themselves to be serious competition for Microsoft.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com