SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

<< Previous Message <<

Date:	Sun, 11 Jan 2004 22:06:20 PST8
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: QA equals testing, Part One:Detection

Content Type: text/plain

Lynn H. Maxson wrote:
>
> I do thank you as another source to point out
> to Peter that anything he codes is specifiable.
> He's having some difficulty in grasping that.

No. I'm having trouble grasping why you aren't making any progress.

I'm not trying to dissuade you on your quest. But if you'd spent the
past five years coding we'd all be farther along.

> In 35+ years of using PL/I I have yet to see an
> instance in any application area where it was
> not a match for languages specialized for that
> area as well as a match for their performance.

The PL/I Level F compiler compiled straight to machine code, and had an
option to disassemble that code into Assembler. I did that a number of
times. Guess what? The generated machine code didn't look any
different from what you might get from any other language compiler (with
the exception of unique library calls, of course). I too love PL/I, but
I realize that it is just one particular organized syntax.

The PL/I macro front-end is nice. It allows you to do things like
manually specify loop unrolling. But this requires a "spec", Lynn. The
programmer (or "specifier") has to specifically say "unroll this loop"
-- and that person has to have insight into and knowledge about the
entire system so loops will be unrolled as necessary and reordered as
necessary. The compiler ain't gonna figure it out by itself, Lynn. And
if you keep adding specs, well, all you are doing is writing your
algorithm in a different particular organized syntax.

- Peter

=====================================================

To unsubscribe from this list, send an email message
to "steward@scoug.com". In the body of the message,
put the command "unsubscribe scoug-programming".

For problems, contact the list owner at
"rollin@scoug.com".

=====================================================

Return to [ 11 | January | 2004 ]

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.