[COFF] Re: Of PL/I

["Charles H Sauer (he/him)" <sauer@technologists.com>]

On 4/2/2024 11:40 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 2, 2024 at 11:23 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org 
> <mailto:dave@horsfall.org>> wrote:
> 
>     Has there ever been a full implementation of PL/I?
> 
> Well all of the IBM, GE/Honeywell and DEC compilers were certified.  Bob 
> Freiburghouse (who was part of the Multics compiler if I understand this 
> right), created a firm in Mass that built a number of commercial 
> compilers for  a number of folks, with PL/1 being their prime.  In fact 
> when DEC bought the PL/1 front-end from them (which was in PL/1 of 
> course), Culter and team wrote the VAX back-end, they had to 
> cross-compile in Cambridge (I think at MIT) and bring the assembler 
> source back to ZKO in Nashua to assemble and test.
> 
>        It seems akin tosolving the halting problem...
> 
> No more than Algol-68 and many modern languages.
> 
> 
>     Yes, I've used PL/I in my CompSci days, and was told that IBM had
>     trademarkedeverything from /I to /C :-)
> 
> I think that is more like an urban legend and IBM's notorious marketing 
> behavior since Gary Kidall (who was originally a compiler guy) created 
> PL/M for the 8080 and sold it to Intel.
> 
> 
>     -- Dave, who loved PL/360
> 
> Yeah - it might have been Nicklaus Wirth's best language.  I still have 
> the Standford manuals, but I can not say I have seen a working compiler 
> since the late 1970s :-)

I was ready to jump in, but since I didn't have a definitive answer, I 
waited for someone (Clem) who would really know.

The vast majority of my undergraduate and graduate school work was in 
CDC Fortran. When I joined IBM Yorktown in 1975, I brought that work 
with me in thousands of punched cards. Initially, I continued my 
simulation work in Fortran. As that work became more important, Fortran 
was unacceptable. I wrote a Fortran to PL/I crude translator in SNOBOL, 
had the PL/I version running in a couple of weeks, and didn't look back.

Being judicious in using just the good parts, PL/I seemed just fine. 
Essentially all of my work at Yorktown was in PL/I.

The 801 people created PL.8, which was primarily a subset of the good 
parts of PL/I, but with some changes that I'd have to research to remember.

Charlie
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