Re: No Country for Old System Administrators

From	cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups	comp.os.vms
Subject	Re: No Country for Old System Administrators
Date	2026-05-06 12:55 +0000
Organization	PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Message-ID	<10tfdnj$6pv$1@reader1.panix.com> (permalink)
References	<10t685f$2ilti$1@dont-email.me> <69fa533d$0$676$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <10tdp7e$oc5h$5@dont-email.me> <10tdrrf$muss$1@dont-email.me>

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In article <10tdrrf$muss$1@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 5/5/2026 5:59 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 May 2026 16:29:49 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> * simple programming languages only trying to do a few things well
>>>     often thrive and live longer than complex languages trying to
>>>     do everything - Cobol and C did better than PL/I and Ada
>> 
>> Cobol is “simple”?? Yeah, right ...
>
>Yes.
>
>The Cobol language is relative simple.

I don't know about that, but I suspect that the definition of
what is "simple" varies.  Is the syntax simple?  It's meant to
be.  Are the semantics simple?  Eh...I don't know.  I think
some of them can be surprisingly subtle.

>When it was created there was actually people that believed
>programmers would no longer be needed and the business people
>could write their own Cobol.
>
>That did not happen.
>
>People that already know some of the modern programming
>languages need to do a mental reset when learning Cobol,
>because Cobol is do different. But different is not the
>same as complex.

It's best to think of COBOL as a DSL for business data
processing.

>> Ada is still with us, and spawning projects like Spark to point out to
>> the Rust folks that some people were worrying about memory safety
>> before they were even born ...

[Not Arne's comment, but since I plonked Troll]

This is a dumb take.  Of course the Rust developers know about
efforts at memory safe languages prior to Rust; Ada, Cyclone,
and OCaml were were among the set that influenced the design.

Ironically, Rust is now influencing the development of Ada
(which wants something similar to the borrow checker) and
OCaml (the "modes" stuff was directly inspired by Rust).

>I am sure there are also places where PL/I are still used.
>Likely in the financial sector.

For applications?  Probably.  It found a fair bit of use for
systems programming inside IBM and other places.  Multics was
famously implemented in PL/1.

>But while PL/I and Ada were main languages many years ago,
>then they are very niche today.

I wouldn't say that either was ever a "main" language, but I'm
not sure what you mean by that.  But with respect to PL/I,
COBOL and Fortran always eclipsed it for its original purpose as
a language suitable for both business and science; Ada found
favor in the embedded and safety-critical communities (aerospace
and automotive; defense, etc) but was never a particularly
successful language outside of that; certainly not in comparison
to its contemporaries.

Both were highly influential for languages that came afterwards,
though (fun fact: C's `/* ... */`` come from PL/1, through B.
BCPL, B's immediate predecessor, used the `//` convention and
only adopted the PL/I style delimiters later, after C had become
popular).

	- Dan C.

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Thread

No Country for Old System Administrators Subcommandante XDelta <vlf@star.enet.dec.com> - 2026-05-03 11:25 +1000
  Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-02 22:08 -0400
    Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-03 06:43 +0000
    Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-04 01:02 +0000
  Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-03 06:45 +0000
    Re: No Country for Old System Administrators bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2026-05-03 08:59 -0400
      Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-03 11:53 -0400
      Re: No Country for Old System Administrators kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2026-05-03 12:10 -0400
        Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-03 13:24 -0400
          Re: No Country for Old System Administrators kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2026-05-03 19:27 -0400
            Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-03 20:28 -0400
              Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-04 02:26 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2026-05-03 22:46 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-03 23:29 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-03 23:39 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-04 11:17 -0400
        Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-04 02:24 +0000
        Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2026-05-05 13:02 +0000
          Re: No Country for Old System Administrators kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2026-05-05 16:10 -0400
            Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-05 16:29 -0400
              Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-05 21:59 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-05 18:43 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-05 23:04 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-05 19:13 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-05 19:41 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2026-05-05 21:47 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-05 22:17 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-06 04:17 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-06 09:29 -0400
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-06 21:20 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-06 12:55 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2026-05-06 12:46 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-06 17:36 +0000
              New language features Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2026-05-06 12:44 +0000
      Safer programming languages Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2026-05-05 12:24 +0000
    Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-03 13:28 -0400
    Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2026-05-05 12:59 +0000
      Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-05 21:30 +0000
        Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2026-05-05 19:05 -0400
          Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-06 17:20 +0000
            Re: No Country for Old System Administrators drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2026-05-07 03:04 +0000
              Re: No Country for Old System Administrators Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2026-05-07 12:36 +0000
                Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-07 14:22 +0000
              Re: No Country for Old System Administrators cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-07 13:00 +0000

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