16 Nov
2021
16 Nov
'21
6:54 p.m.
On 2021-11-16 09:57, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
The following remark stirred old memories. Apologies
for straying off
the path of TUHS.
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.
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.
Doug