[COFF] What languges would you like to learn?

[sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer)]

On 12/26/2019 3:37 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 07:28:27AM +1000, David Arnold wrote:
>> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
> 
> Bingo, well said.  I find kitchen sink languages like that awful.
> It's not what you put in, it's what you don't let in.
> 
> As you said, it takes a lot of discipline to use the right subset
> which makes you wonder why there isn't a language that is the right
> subset.

PL.8 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/8) springs to mind. I can't say 
that it was the right or wrong subset of PL/I. I do know that I wrote a 
major simulation environment in PL/I while avoiding much of PL/I. I 
never used PL.8 myself, just learned it enough to write a PL.8 to C 
conversion tool that some AIX folks found useful.

Though the Wikipedia page makes PL.8 sound successful, it is hard to 
imagine that more than a small minority of folks chose PL.8 over PL/I. 
Even assuming PL.8 was the right subset, it would have struggled to 
overcome entrenched PL/I.