The selection of "best language" is subjective and IMHO it makes more sense to talk about the best language s for specific problem domains.
I'd rank PL/I above HLASM, but must admit to supplementing my PL/I programming with utility subroutines written in assembler. For processing large arrays, APL might actually be reasonable. I'd love to see some performance numbers. Which Perl and which Rexx? For Rexx, performance depends on what version of what interpreter you use. Has anyone done an oorexx 5 versus regina shootoff? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Leonard D Woren [[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2022 3:19 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: AW: NOTSP The Latin of Software Code Is Thriving - The New York Times Mike Beer wrote on 7/7/2022 10:55 PM: > Other candidates could include PL/I - which is/was very common in Europe - Even though I haven't written a PL/I program since college, I still think it's the second-best language and I'm disappointed that it's rarely used in the USA. (Best language? HLA with structured programming macros!) > REXX Good, but slow. I converted a CPU pig PC program from REXX to Perl and it took 1/3 of the CPU time. > and maybe APL. Ya gotta be kidding. First of all, everyone knows that APL is a write-only language. Second, what fraction of programmers these days know APL? Maybe 0.00001%? And my recollection is that APL is a CPU pig. > Applications that were created many years ago work with virtually no > modifications. In the early days of MVS/XA, i.e., 31 bit addressing, I had a very old TSO command load module but I didn't have easy access to the source. It abended S0C4 when run on MVS/XA. So I marked it AMODE31 and it ran fine. Cleanly written in Assembler, in the early days of MVS/370. /Leonard > > Best regards > Mike > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> Im Auftrag von > Timothy Sipples > Gesendet: Friday, July 08, 2022 7:37 > An: [email protected] > Betreff: Re: NOTSP The Latin of Software Code Is Thriving - The New York > Times > > It's *so* weird! Imagine writing this: > > "Sarah, age 23, rejected her college advisor's career advice and started > work at Boeing in Seattle last year. Her friends who mainly pursued careers > in banking and law outright laugh at her for designing airplanes, the > antiquated vehicles invented well over a century ago. But Sarah takes their > ribbing in stride even as she works on designs that past generations of > engineers could mostly comprehend." > > Or this: > > "Last night Olivia Rodrigo won the 2022 GRAMMY for Best New Artist. It's > ironic that the Recording Academy uses the word 'new' to describe any award > they hand out. Audio recording was invented all the way back in the 1800s > with only modest incremental improvements since. And it's particularly > galling that Rodrigo has never publicly thanked Thomas Edison and other > music recording pioneers for contributing to her success in the ancient > industry she chose. Of course everyone knows music is dying. One analyst in > Ecuador predicts that within 10 years the number of people who listen to > music at least once per day will fall by 92.4%." > > Here's how I think of programming languages. There's a very short list of > programming languages that are both so common, so useful, and (relatedly) so > adaptable (incrementally improved, integrated, extended, etc.) that they > have (for all intents and purposes) achieved "immortality." COBOL is > definitely on this distinguished short list. Other things being equal it's a > great characteristic when you're making investment choices including career > choices. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
