On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 11:08:26 -0500
Harold Stevens <wookie@aspen.localdomain> wrote:

> In <20240927075959.00005b7b@gmail.com> John Ames:
>
> > She really *was* the first programmer...!
>
> +1
>
> Dibs on the sig line ...

Be my guest ;)

Harold Stevens wrote:
> In <20240927075959.00005b7b@gmail.com> John Ames:
>
>> She really *was* the first programmer...!
>
> +1
>
> Dibs on the sig line ...
>

Looking at *your* sig line, I think you can toss the GoogleGropes reference.

On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:

> Cobol was also very portable.

As long as your destination compiler supports COMP-3. :-)

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:

>> On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:06:36 +0000, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On 25 Sep 2024 06:52:08 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 23:45:51 +0000, rbowman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 21:14:04 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> PL/I was IBM’s attempt at a Grand Unification of both “business” and
>>>>>> “scientific” programming in one language. If you thought C++
>>>>>> programming was full of surprises when your program did unexpected
>>>>>> things, PL/I invented the whole genre of “surprise-ridden programming
>>>>>> language”
>>>>>
>>>>> IBM was always so modest. Programming Language One. A Programming
>>>>> Language.
>>>>
>>>> A colleague of mine wrote a powerful macro processor (which I still use
>>>> and maintain). He called it Macro Language One - ML/I. He loved taking
>>>> the piss out of IBM.
>>>
>>> Gary Kildall may have been doing that with PL/M, Programming Language
>>> for Microprocessors. It did have some PL/I DNA.
>>
>> There are also PL-516, PL-11, ...
>
> PL.8

And on the operating system side, I know of
OS/2, OS/3, OS/4, OS/7, and OS/9.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:

> I always liked ascii-delimited multi-value records.
> Hey, you can actually READ them. They are also VERY
> easy and cheap for microcontrollers and such to
> create on the fly.

Yes, I got into them early - and found it was a short easy
step to CSV, so now my stuff can be read by the people in
spreadsheet land. I have, however, had to put a fair amount
of effort into what I call "Excel-proofing" my data, since
our favourite Redmond software company loves meddling with it.
ISO 8601 does a good job of sidestepping Excel's obsession
with turning dates into month/day/year format, for instance.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I’d love to get Glass’ books, but they seem to be unobtanium.

That's why I closely guard my copy of "The Universal Elixir
(and other projects which failed)". Somewhere in my junk box
I think I have a photocopies of some of his articles too.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:52:04 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>> Another thing PL/I got from COBOL is “natural” string handling. Assign a
>> short string to a larger any the result is automatically blank-padded.
>
> That kind of misfeature is only needed in the sad world of non-dynamic,
> fixed-length strings ...

Which for many of us was the only world that existed at the time.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:

> For a long time, FORTRAN was the only remotely portable language, so lots
> of programs were written in it.

As Stan Kelly-Bootle put it in _The Devil's DP Dictionary_:

Yet FORTRAN gallops on, as transportable as syphilis,
fired by a bottomless pit of working subprograms.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 17:43:34 UTC
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 17:43:34 GMT
X-Received-Bytes: 1336
Xref: unconfigured alt.folklore.computers:656 comp.os.linux.misc:2563

On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:

> For a long time, FORTRAN was the only remotely portable language, so lots
> of programs were written in it.

As Stan Kelly-Bootle put it in _The Devil's DP Dictionary_:

Yet FORTRAN gallops on, as transportable as syphilis,
fired by a bottomless pit of working subprograms.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.folklore.computers.]
On 2024-09-27, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> PL.8
>
> And on the operating system side, I know of
> OS/2, OS/3, OS/4, OS/7, and OS/9.

Also OS/8 for the PDP-8.

Niklas
--
One ork-place managed the magic 80dB, mainly through one person's gift of
the gab, which left me with the rather entertaining task of pointing out to
management that HSE guidelines require me to have full hearing protection
when dealing with said cow-orker. -- Peter Corlett in asr

Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>>> On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:06:36 +0000, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 25 Sep 2024 06:52:08 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 23:45:51 +0000, rbowman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 21:14:04 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> PL/I was IBM’s attempt at a Grand Unification of both “business” and
>>>>>>> “scientific” programming in one language. If you thought C++
>>>>>>> programming was full of surprises when your program did unexpected
>>>>>>> things, PL/I invented the whole genre of “surprise-ridden programming
>>>>>>> language”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> IBM was always so modest. Programming Language One. A Programming
>>>>>> Language.
>>>>>
>>>>> A colleague of mine wrote a powerful macro processor (which I still use
>>>>> and maintain). He called it Macro Language One - ML/I. He loved taking
>>>>> the piss out of IBM.
>>>>
>>>> Gary Kildall may have been doing that with PL/M, Programming Language
>>>> for Microprocessors. It did have some PL/I DNA.
>>>
>>> There are also PL-516, PL-11, ...
>>
>> PL.8
>
> And on the operating system side, I know of
> OS/2, OS/3, OS/4, OS/7, and OS/9.
>

OS1100 bzw. OS2200.

On 24/09/2024 22:14, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
[...]
> It didn’t help that Algol-60 had nothing resembling standardized I/O
> facilities, whereas these were an integral feature of both Fortran and
> COBOL.

This is true, but somewhat unfair if intended as a criticism of
A60. The idea in those days was that each computer had its own Autocode,
each with its own idiosyncrasies [Fortran being, in essence, IBM Autocode]
and very little commonality. Algol was a project for the expression, in
an agreed format, of algorithms. Thus, if you wanted to invert a matrix,
or construct a spanning tree, or numerically solve an equation, you took
down your trusty CACM or CompJ, found an appropriate approved algorithm,
and transcribed that into your favourite Autocode. You weren't really
expected to write complete programs in A60. That changed later.

> This was remedied later in Algol-68, at the cost of adding a lot of
> complexity.

Formats were the only complicated part of A68 [and were commonly,
in the early days, not implemented]. That apart, the transput was easier
than in most languages, ancient and modern. The "print" routine took one
parameter, a list of printable things [inc positioning], and printed them.
If you didn't want the standard printing style, there were routines to
turn numbers into strings in easy ways.

People complained about the size of the A68 reports, but that was
before they saw the modern C standards, which still don't define C in the
sort of formality that A68 achieved.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Ganz

On 9/27/24 13:43, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Cobol was also very portable.
>
> As long as your destination compiler supports COMP-3. :-)
>
Or your source computer didn't have COMP-3, or if you didn't use it.

Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
> As Lynne will be happy to tell you, the original IBM TCP/IP implementation
> was written in IBM Pascal for VM/CMS.

The IBM communication group was fiercely fighting off client/server and
distributed computing and trying to block mainframe TCP/IP release. When
that got overturned they changed their tactic and claimed that since
they had corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed
datacenter walls, it had to be release through them. What shipped got
aggregate 44kbytes/sec using nearly whole 3090 processor. It was also
made available on MVS by doing MVS VM370 "diagnose" instruction
simulation.

I then do RFC1044 implementation and in some tuning tests at Cray
Research between Cray and IBM 4341, get 4341 sustained channel
throughput using only modest amount of 4341 CPU (something like 500
times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed).

In the 90s, the IBM communication group hires a silicon contractor to
implement tcp/ip support directly in VTAM, what he demo'ed had TCP
running much faster than LU6.2. He was then told that everybody knows
that LU6.2 is much faster than a "proper" TCP/IP implementation and they
would only be paying for a "proper" implementation.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024, Bob Eager wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 11:32:05 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 20:51:25 -0000 (UTC) Lawrence D'Oliveiro
>> <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:18:01 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> One of the favourite functions in my library pulls the next token
>>>> from a delimited string, but as opposed to strtok() it does it
>>>> non-destructively and can handle empty strings.
>>>
>>> Use a high-level language which has all this and more:
>>>
>>> for item in "the,quick,brown,fox".split(",") :
>>> print(item)
>>> #end for
>>>
>>> Output:
>>>
>>> the quick brown fox
>>>
>>> In Python, strings are objects, and that applies to string expressions
>>> (including string literals) as well.
>>
>> You need Rexx
>
> Hear, hear. Still use it.
>

Rexx? That is a name I haven't heard in a long time. Do you mean Ben
Kenobi?

Last time I encountered him he was doing tuning and statistics collection
for on a storage system.

On 2024-09-27, R Daneel Olivaw <Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov> wrote:

> Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> And on the operating system side, I know of
>> OS/2, OS/3, OS/4, OS/7, and OS/9.
>
> OS1100 bzw. OS2200.

Right, forgot about them. Univac was a big contributor to
OS/<number>; in addition to 3, 4, and 7 above, they also
had OS-100 and OS-500 for variations of their 9300 operating
system that hung a Unicscope 100 or a DCT-500 terminal
onto the machine. These were seldom used - we didn't need
much help filling out the 32K of memory available to us.

Is there an OS/5 or an OS/6 so we can complete the set
of one-digit numbers?

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Sep 2024, Bob Eager wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 11:32:05 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 20:51:25 -0000 (UTC) Lawrence D'Oliveiro
>>> <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:18:01 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> One of the favourite functions in my library pulls the next token
>>>>> from a delimited string, but as opposed to strtok() it does it
>>>>> non-destructively and can handle empty strings.
>>>>
>>>> Use a high-level language which has all this and more:
>>>>
>>>> for item in "the,quick,brown,fox".split(",") :
>>>> print(item)
>>>> #end for
>>>>
>>>> Output:
>>>>
>>>> the quick brown fox
>>>>
>>>> In Python, strings are objects, and that applies to string expressions
>>>> (including string literals) as well.
>>>
>>> You need Rexx
>>
>> Hear, hear. Still use it.
>
> Rexx? That is a name I haven't heard in a long time. Do you mean Ben
> Kenobi?
>
> Last time I encountered him he was doing tuning and statistics collection
> for on a storage system.

There was a version of Rexx for the Amiga (A-Rexx). People who used it
loved it. Its bag of tricks included inter-process communication.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/27/24 13:43, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Cobol was also very portable.
>>
>> As long as your destination compiler supports COMP-3. :-)
>
> Or your source computer didn't have COMP-3, or if you didn't use it.

I was once called in to optimize a CPU-bound COBOL program.
The genius who wrote it declared all subscripts as COMP-3.
Changing them to COMP-4 knocked 30% off the execution time.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 17:43:30 +0000, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-09-27, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>>> On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:06:36 +0000, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 25 Sep 2024 06:52:08 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 23:45:51 +0000, rbowman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 21:14:04 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> PL/I was IBM’s attempt at a Grand Unification of both “business”
>>>>>>> and “scientific” programming in one language. If you thought C++
>>>>>>> programming was full of surprises when your program did unexpected
>>>>>>> things, PL/I invented the whole genre of “surprise-ridden
>>>>>>> programming language”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> IBM was always so modest. Programming Language One. A Programming
>>>>>> Language.
>>>>>
>>>>> A colleague of mine wrote a powerful macro processor (which I still
>>>>> use and maintain). He called it Macro Language One - ML/I. He loved
>>>>> taking the piss out of IBM.
>>>>
>>>> Gary Kildall may have been doing that with PL/M, Programming Language
>>>> for Microprocessors. It did have some PL/I DNA.
>>>
>>> There are also PL-516, PL-11, ...
>>
>> PL.8
>
> And on the operating system side, I know of OS/2, OS/3, OS/4, OS/7, and
> OS/9.

You forgot DEC's OS/8.

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

trivia: late 80s univ studying mainframe VTAM implementation LU6.2 had
160k instruction pathlength (and 15 buffer copies) compared to unix/bsd
(4.3 tahoe/reno) TCP had a 5k instruction pathlength (and 5 buffer
copies).

I was on Greg Chesson's XTP TAB and did further optimization with CRC
trailer protocol with outboard XTP LAN chip where CRC was
calculated as the packet flowed through and added/checked it in the
trailor. Also allowed for no buffer copy with scatter/gather (aka doing
packet I/O directly from user memory).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On 9/25/24 2:48 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 02:28:15 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Well, I *was* the Old Guy ... and noted that those moving in to be my
>> replacements knew almost SHIT about programming/systems.
>
> Well, now you seem to be the one whose knowledge is, shall we say, judging
> from your other comments on this thread, tending towards obsolescence?

Um ... don't really think it's "obsolete" - it's
the good old core stuff. However, once Russia
and China/NK are done, those super-wonderful
online biz apps may be what's obsolete - maybe
REAL soon now given the trends. I get the
feeling there's a whole new cadre of lawyers
who will specialize in data/function stolen
or corrupted by 'online' biz apps. That'll
be fun .....

'Online' is a way so your supposed IT people
aren't RESPONSIBLE. It's a sort of career/
legal DODGE - plus know-nothing "IT" people
can get CRAP salaries :-)

IMHO, keep your OWN data farm. your OWN router
and firewalls, use apps installed ON yer own
PCs, do your OWN (multi-) backup pgms. Do NOT
use any all-system update or remote-admin tricks.
This is MUCH harder for Vlad's boyz to destroy.

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 17:43:30 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> And on the operating system side, I know of OS/2, OS/3, OS/4, OS/7, and
> OS/9.

There was a PL/0 -- I think it was a toy example language concocted by
Wirth to demonstrate compiler techniques.

Did nobody think of coming up with an OS/0 ... ?

Not even an OS/1 ...

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 19:29:05 +0100, Andy Walker wrote:

> People complained about the size of the A68 reports, but that was
> before they saw the modern C standards, which still don't define C in
> the sort of formality that A68 achieved.

I, too, wondered at the time why more people didn’t feel that the Algol 68
spec was an important step forward in formal language definition.

But then, look at how plain-language descriptions have actually been made
to work over the past few decades: a common strategy is to require the
existence of two independently-created implementations that demonstrate
interoperability from the same spec, as an indication that the spec is
sufficiently clear and free of bugs to be worth finalizing.

We do this not just with programming languages (all the ones in current
use), but with things like file formats and network protocol specs as well
-- look at the “RFC” series of documents from the IETF, for example.

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 10:43:13 +0100, Pancho wrote:

> Ah! there we have the Internet and a Search engine. :-)

My knowledge of those documents comes from having actual paper copies
while using actual physical machines, back in the day when these systems
were new.

> I'm not sure if I had that book or not. It looks like it is heavily
> orientated to calling VMS system services from C. I think my problem was
> calling C from Pascal. The application was Pascal based.

Pascal should have been easier. VAX Pascal (V2 and later) had all kinds of
elaborate facilities (nonstandard, of course) for low-level interfacing to
the system and to other languages, controlling storage layout in the
linker etc. It was a full-on systems programming language and no mistake.

Again, I know all this from first-hand experience.

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 17:43:33 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-09-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:52:04 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>>> Another thing PL/I got from COBOL is “natural” string handling. Assign
>>> a short string to a larger any the result is automatically
>>> blank-padded.
>>
>> That kind of misfeature is only needed in the sad world of non-dynamic,
>> fixed-length strings ...
>
> Which for many of us was the only world that existed at the time.

Back in the days when BASIC was considered “advanced” ... ;)

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 11:32:05 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

> You need Rexx

Try this in Rexx:

import re

for item in re.split(r"[\;\,\-\?]", "the;quick-brown?fox") :
print(item)
#end for

Output:

the
quick
brown
fox