[COFF] Joys of PL/I [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

[COFF] Joys of PL/I [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

[Nemo Nusquam]

On 2021-11-16 09:57, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> The following remark stirred old memories. Apologies for straying off
> the path of TUHS.
>
>> I have gotten the impression that [PL/I] was a language that was beloved by no one.
> As I was a designer of PL/I, an implementer of EPL (the preliminary
> PL/I compiler used to build Multics), and author of the first PL/I
> program to appear in the ACM Collected Algorithms, it's a bit hard to
> admit that PL/I was "insignificant". I'm proud, though, of having
> conceived the SIGNAL statement, which pioneered exception handling,
> and the USES and SETS attributes, which unfortunately sank into
> oblivion. I also spurred Bud Lawson to invent -> for pointer-chasing.
> The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C.
>
> After the ACM program I never wrote another line of PL/I.
> Gratification finally came forty years on when I met a retired
> programmer who, unaware of my PL/I connection, volunteered that she
> had loved PL/I above all other programming languages.

My first language was actually PL/C  (and the computer centre did not 
charge for runs in PL/C).  I needed to use PL/I for some thesis-related 
work and ran into the JLC wall -- no issues with the former, many issues 
with the latter.  One of the support people, upon learning that I was 
using PL/I, said: "PL/I's alright!"

N.

>
> Doug

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Re: [COFF] Joys of PL/I [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

[Charles H Sauer]

On 11/16/2021 12:54 PM, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> On 2021-11-16 09:57, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
>> The following remark stirred old memories. Apologies for straying off
>> the path of TUHS.

>>> I have gotten the impression that [PL/I] was a language that was 
>>> beloved by no one.
>> As I was a designer of PL/I, an implementer of EPL (the preliminary
>> PL/I compiler used to build Multics), and author of the first PL/I
>> program to appear in the ACM Collected Algorithms, it's a bit hard to
>> admit that PL/I was "insignificant". I'm proud, though, of having
>> conceived the SIGNAL statement, which pioneered exception handling,
>> and the USES and SETS attributes, which unfortunately sank into
>> oblivion. I also spurred Bud Lawson to invent -> for pointer-chasing.
>> The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C.

>> After the ACM program I never wrote another line of PL/I.
>> Gratification finally came forty years on when I met a retired
>> programmer who, unaware of my PL/I connection, volunteered that she
>> had loved PL/I above all other programming languages.

> My first language was actually PL/C  (and the computer centre did not 
> charge for runs in PL/C).  I needed to use PL/I for some thesis-related 
> work and ran into the JLC wall -- no issues with the former, many issues 
> with the latter.  One of the support people, upon learning that I was 
> using PL/I, said: "PL/I's alright!"

Inside IBM in the 70s, PL/I was definitely not "insignificant". From my 
perspective it was the most reasonable language available on VM/370. I 
arrived at Yorktown in 1975 fresh from Austin with a couple of boxes of 
punch cards of my "APLOMB" simulation program written in Fortran. I was 
surprised when I was encouraged to pursue major enhancement of APLOMB 
and dismayed by continuing in Fortran. After a period of increasing 
frustration, I wrote a SNOBOL program to convert APLOMB to PL/I and 
become the basis for RESQ 
(https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/remembering-resq/). As 
long as I avoided questionable parts of IBM's PL/I, I was happy with 
PL/I. It is hard to imagine that RESQ would have succeeded in any other 
language.

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Re: [COFF] Joys of PL/I [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

[Bakul Shah]

On Nov 16, 2021, at 10:55 AM, Nemo Nusquam <cym224@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 2021-11-16 09:57, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
>> The following remark stirred old memories. Apologies for straying off
>> the path of TUHS.
>> 
>>> I have gotten the impression that [PL/I] was a language that was beloved by no one.
>> As I was a designer of PL/I, an implementer of EPL (the preliminary
>> PL/I compiler used to build Multics), and author of the first PL/I
>> program to appear in the ACM Collected Algorithms, it's a bit hard to
>> admit that PL/I was "insignificant". I'm proud, though, of having
>> conceived the SIGNAL statement, which pioneered exception handling,
>> and the USES and SETS attributes, which unfortunately sank into
>> oblivion. I also spurred Bud Lawson to invent -> for pointer-chasing.
>> The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C.
>> 
>> After the ACM program I never wrote another line of PL/I.
>> Gratification finally came forty years on when I met a retired
>> programmer who, unaware of my PL/I connection, volunteered that she
>> had loved PL/I above all other programming languages.
> 
> My first language was actually PL/C  (and the computer centre did not charge for runs in PL/C).  I needed to use PL/I for some thesis-related work and ran into the JLC wall -- no issues with the former, many issues with the latter.  One of the support people, upon learning that I was using PL/I, said: "PL/I's alright!"

For my very first programming assignment @ USC I spent extra 17 hours due
to an extra space in the JCL statement! It wasn’t a total waste as I rewrote my
program twice, learned to prove to myself that it was correct and once I removed
the space and the program worked, I had a lightbulb moment: Computers were
not inscrutable or mysterious; they were just dumb and literal :-)

I learned IBM assembly language, Fortran and PL/C during those two semesters.
I even wrote an autorouter in Fortran for a project but that my last Fortran project.
Later for a part time job I tried to learn and use pretty much every feature of PL/I.
I found it easier to use than Fortran and fun. Then when I stumbled upon Iverson’s
book on APL and discovered I could use it from an interactive terminal, I managed
to convince the scientist I was working for to let me use it. That was even more fun
but it didn’t last as I made a careless mistake & the program ran too long and used
up most of my boss’es computing budget so it was back to PL/I!

> 
> N.
> 
>> 
>> Doug
> 
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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Clem Cole]

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Moving to COFF where this probably belongs because its less UNIX and more
PL oriented.

On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:

> What language were the PL/I compilers written in?
>
I don't know about anyone else, but the VAX PL/1 front-end was bought by
DEC from Freiburghouse (??SP??) in Framingham, MA. It was written in PL/1
on a Multics system. The Front-end was the same one that Pr1me used
although Pr1me also bought their Fortran, which DEC did not.  [FWIW: The
DEC/Intel Fortran Front-End was written in Pascal -- still is last time I
talked to the compiler folks].

I do not know what the Freiburghouse folks used for a compiler-compiler
(Steve or Doug might ), but >>I think<< it might not have used one.
Culter famously led the new backend for it and had to shuttle tapes from
MIT to ZKO in Nashua during the development.  The backend was written in a
combination of PL/1, BLISS32  and Assembler.  Once the compiler could self
host, everything moved to ZKO.

That compiler originally targeted VMS, but was moved to Unix/VAX at one
point as someone else pointed out.

When the new GEM compilers were about 10-15 years later, I was under the
impressions that the original Freiburghouse/Culter hacked front-end was
reworked to use the GEM backend system, as GEM used BLISS, and C for the
runtimes and a small amount of Assembler as needed for each ISA [And I
believe it continues to be the same from VSI folks today].   GEM based PL/1
was released on Alpha when I was still at DEC, and I believe that it was
released for Itanium a few years later [by Intel under contract to
Compaq/HP].  VSI has built a GEM based Intel*64 and is releasing/has
released VMS for same using it; I would suspect they moved PL/1 over also
[Their target customer is the traditional DEC VMS customer that still has
active applications and wants to run them on modern HW].   I'll have to ask
one of my former coworkers, who at one point was and I still think is, the
main compiler guy at VSI/resident GEM expert.


> Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I
> suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who is
> using it and for what purpose.
>
As best I can tell, commercial sites still use it for traditional code,
just like Cobol. It's interesting, Intel does neither but we spend a ton of
money on Fortran because so much development (both old and new) in the
scientific community requires it.  I answered why elsewhere in more
detail: Where
is Fortran used these days
<https://www.quora.com/Where-is-Fortran-used-these-days/answers/87679712>
and Is Fortran still alive
<https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-still-alive/answer/Clem-Cole>

My >>guess<< is that PL/1 is suffering the same fate as Cobol, and fading
because the apps are being/have been slowly rewritten from custom code to
using COTS solutions from folks like Oracle, SAS, BAAN and the like.   Not
so for Fortran and the reason is that the math has not changed.  The core
of these codes is the same was it was in the 1960s/70s when they were
written.  A friend of mine used to be the Chief Metallurgist for the US Gov
at NIST and as Dr. Fek put it so well: * "I have over 60 years worth of
data that we have classified and we understand what it is telling us.   If
you magically gave me new code to do the same thing as what we do with our
processes that we have developed over the years, I would have to reclassify
all that data.  It's just not economically interesting."  *I personally
equate it to the QWERTY keyboard.  Just not going to change. *i.e.* *"Simple
economics always beats sophisticated architecture."*

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Dan Cross]

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[-TUHS, +COFF]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 22 Nov 2021 at 21:31, Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:
>
>> PL/I was my favorite mainframe programming language my last two years as
>> an undergrad. I liked how it incorporated ideas from FORTRAN, ALGOL, and
>> COBOL. My student job was to enhance a PL/I package for a History
>> professor.
>>
>
> What language were the PL/I compilers written in?
>

The only PL/I compiler I have access to is, somewhat ironically, the
Multics PL/1 compiler. It is largely self-hosting; more details can be
found here: https://multicians.org/pl1.html (Note Doug's name appears
prominently.)

Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I
> suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who is
> using it and for what purpose.
>

I imagine most of it is legacy code in a mainframe environment, similarly
to COBOL. I can't imagine that many folks are considering new development
in PL/1 other than in retro/hobbyist environments and some mainframe shops
where there's a heavy existing PL/I investment.

        - Dan C.

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[COFF] Self-hosting languages (was: Book Recommendation)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 10:23:47 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> Moving to COFF where this probably belongs because its less UNIX and more
> PL oriented.
>
> On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What language were the PL/I compilers written in?
>>
> I don't know about anyone else, but the VAX PL/1 front-end was bought by
> DEC from Freiburghouse (??SP??) in Framingham, MA. It was written in PL/1
> on a Multics system.

I can easily believe that PL/I was written in PL/I.  While at Tandem,
I met Don Nelson, apparently an important member of the COBOL world.
He was, of course, responsible for our COBOL compiler (which, again
I'm told, had quite a good reputation).  Don told me that he had
written it entirely in COBOL.

Now that's a whole different level of difficulty.

Greg
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Re: [COFF] Self-hosting languages (was: Book Recommendation)

[Brantley Coile]

Unstring was his friend, I would guess. Nothing in COBOL is recursive. 

> On Nov 23, 2021, at 7:38 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 10:23:47 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>> Moving to COFF where this probably belongs because its less UNIX and more
>> PL oriented.
>> 
>>> On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> What language were the PL/I compilers written in?
>>> 
>> I don't know about anyone else, but the VAX PL/1 front-end was bought by
>> DEC from Freiburghouse (??SP??) in Framingham, MA. It was written in PL/1
>> on a Multics system.
> 
> I can easily believe that PL/I was written in PL/I.  While at Tandem,
> I met Don Nelson, apparently an important member of the COBOL world.
> He was, of course, responsible for our COBOL compiler (which, again
> I'm told, had quite a good reputation).  Don told me that he had
> written it entirely in COBOL.
> 
> Now that's a whole different level of difficulty.
> 
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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[COFF] PL/1 [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

[Nemo Nusquam]

Over to COFF...

On 2021-11-23 02:57, Henry Bent wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2021 at 21:31, Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net 
> <mailto:mah@mhorton.net>> wrote:
>
>     PL/I was my favorite mainframe programming language my last two
>     years as
>     an undergrad. I liked how it incorporated ideas from FORTRAN,
>     ALGOL, and
>     COBOL. My student job was to enhance a PL/I package for a History
>     professor.
>
>
> What language were the PL/I compilers written in?
 From AFIPS '69 (Fall): "The Multics compiler is the only PL/1 compiler 
written in PL/1 [...]"

HOPL I has a talk on the early history of PL/1 (born as NPL) but nothing 
on the question.

N.



>
> Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I 
> suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who 
> is using it and for what purpose.
>
> -Henry

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Noel Chiappa]

OK, this is my last _civil_ request to stop email-bombing both lists with
trafic. In the future, I will say publicly _exactly_ what I think - and if
screens still had phosphor, it would probably peel it off.

I can see that there are cases when one might validly want to post to both
lists - e.g. when starting a new discusson. However, one of the two should
_always_ be BCC'd, so that simple use of reply won't generate a copy to
both. I would suggest that one might say something like 'this discussion is
probably best continued on the <foo> list' - which could be seeded by BCCing
the _other_.

Thank you.

      Noel
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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Dan Cross]

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[TUHS to Bcc]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2021 at 9:15 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> Adam - first thank you.  Pleased to know he's still kicking around.
>
> On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 11:26 PM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic
>> world of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell
>> of a lot from his works.
>>
> Not true at all.  If you grew up as EE, in the late 1960s/early 1970s it
> was hard to not know about him since he was so prolific.  FWIW, before I
> went to CMU, he was already a hero and I had a number of books from the
> late 1960's.   When I was freshman in the early 1970s, his TTL Cookbook was
> an optional text for the intro to EE course [I already had it but a number
> of my mates had never seen it before].  His CMOS Cookbox was not published
> yet, but when it was, I bought it.
>

Indeed, still well-known: I have both his TTL and CMOS cookbooks within
easy reach.

        - Dan C.

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Clem Cole]

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Adam - first thank you.  Pleased to know he's still kicking around.

On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 11:26 PM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world
> of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a
> lot from his works.
>
Not true at all.  If you grew up as EE, in the late 1960s/early 1970s it
was hard to not know about him since he was so prolific.  FWIW, before I
went to CMU, he was already a hero and I had a number of books from the
late 1960's.   When I was freshman in the early 1970s, his TTL Cookbook was
an optional text for the intro to EE course [I already had it but a number
of my mates had never seen it before].  His CMOS Cookbox was not published
yet, but when it was, I bought it.

Side story, I want to say about 1969/70, after reading one of his articles
in Radio-Electronics I sent him a (US snail mail) letter asking him for
help in designing an RF interface to a TV.  He replied to me but told me
such a design would be illegal to make as it would run afoul of FCC rules.
I wish I had kept that letter, but he reversed himself a few years later
with his TV Typewriter and Son of Video books.  My guess is he had been
researching the idea for one of the magazines when I contacted him, and
must have gotten a ruling from legal counsel about publishing the same.   I
always wondered what made him change his mind a few years later.  Since he
seems to publish an email, I think I'll have to write him and ask that way
to see if he responds.

Clem


ᐧ

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Adam Thornton]

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Probably time to move this to COFF, but

along the line of Fission for Program Comprehension....

I wonder how many of you don't know about Don Lancaster.

Pioneer in home computing back when that meant something, inventor of a
very low cost 1970s video terminal (the TV Typewriter), tremendously
skilled hacker, brilliant guy.

Also still alive, lives a couple hours away from me in Safford, AZ, and has
been doing fantastic research on Native American hanging canals for the
last couple decades.

Anyway: he wrote a magnificent piece on how to understand a (6502) program
from its disassembly, which reminded me of Gibbons's work:
https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/tearing_rework.pdf

I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world
of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a
lot from his works.

Adam

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Clem Cole]

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Moving to COFF ...

On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 10:50 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I'm not even sure how much of this you can lay at the feet of teachers: I
> would argue that we see a huge efflorescence of essentially self-taught
> programming cobbled together from (in the old days) the system manuals a
>
Ouch ...   this is exactly my point.  In my experience in ~55 years of
programming, with greater than 45 of those being paid to do it, the best
programmers I know and have worked with were taught/mentored by a master --
not self-taught.  As I said, I had to be re-educated once I got the CMU.
My Dad had done the best he knew, but much of what he taught me was
shortcuts and tricks because that is what he knew 🠪 he taught me syntax,
not how to think.  I know a lot of programmers (like myself) that were
self-taught or introduced to computing by novices to start and that
experience get them excited, but all of them had real teachers/mentors who
taught them the true art form and helped them unlearn a lot of crap that
they had picked up or miss-interpreted.

Looking at my father as a teacher, he really had never been taught to think
like a programmer.  In the late 1950s he was a 'computer' [see the movie
"Hidden Figures"].  He was taught FORTRAN and BASIC and told to implement
things he had been doing by hand (solving differential equations using
linear algebra).    The ideas we know and loved about structured
programming and* how to do this well* were still being invented by folks
like Doug and his sisters and brothers in the research community. It's no
surprise that my Dad taught me to 'hack' because he and I had nothing to
compare to.   BTW: this is not to state all HS computer teachers are bad,
but the problem is that most people that are really good at programming are
actually quite rare and they tend to end up in research or industry -- not
teaching HS.  Today, the typical HS computer teacher (like one of my
nieces) takes a course or two at UMASS in the teacher's college.  They are
never taught to program or take the same courses the kids in science and
engineering take 🠪 BTW I also think this is why we see so much of the
popular press talking about 'coding' not programming.  They really think
learning to program is learning the syntax of a specific programming
language.

When I look at the young people I hire (and mentor) told, it's not any
different.    BTW:  Jon and I had a little bit of a disagreement when he
wrote his book.  He uses Javascript for a lot of his examples - because of
exactly what you point out 🠪 Javascript today, like BASIC before it, has a
very high "on-screen results" factor with little work by the user.   Much
is being done behind the covers to make that magic happen.  I tend to
believe that creates a false sense of knowledge/understanding.

To Jon's credit, he tries to bridge that in his book.   As I said, I
thought I knew a lot more about computers until I got to CMU.  Boy was I in
for an education.    That said, I was lucky to be around some very smart
people who helped steer me.

Clem
ᐧ

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

[Adam Thornton]

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From TUHS (to Doug McIlroy):
"Curious what you think of APL"

I'm sure what Doug thinks of APL is unprintable.  Unless, of course, he has
the special type ball.

<rimshot>

On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 8:23 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C.
>>
>
> You seem to have a gift for notation. That's rare.  Curious what you think
> of APL?
>

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