Path: csiph.com!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border4.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: glen herrmannsfeldt Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: PL/I nostalgia, was Decades of compiler technology and what do we get? Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:03:54 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 28 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <12-04-077@comp.compilers> References: <12-04-070@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1335145497 36570 64.57.183.58 (23 Apr 2012 01:44:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:44:57 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: PL/I Posted-Date: 22 Apr 2012 21:44:57 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:620 (snip, someone wrote) > > > > There isn't any need. We're fixing existing COBOL and it's easy to > > > > fix. Just take stuff out of loops that doesn't belong there! It > > > > works great.. (big snip, including generated code listing from PL/I) > Maybe the experts in this group would like to give their thoughts about > the why of this apparently/seemingly/obviously ridiculous(?) regression? > [The conventional wisdom is that COBOL programs are all I/O bound, so > the speed of the object code is not a big deal. There are plenty of > other compilers that can optimize this kind of stuff. -John] It has always seemed to me that PL/I would have been more successful if the early compilers generated faster code (and ran faster, too). It might have been that too much of the above was adopted, along with other COBOL features, by PL/I. There are many things that other languages, such as Fortran, traditionally didn't let you do, because they might run too slow, but that PL/I allowed. (Many of those have now been added to Fortran.) Of all languages, I think I still find PL/I the most fun to write in, though not necessarily best for the problems I actually need done. -- glen