Re: language design implications for variant records in a pascal-like language

Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.theworld.com> wrote:
(snip)


> I rather strongly disagree with that last sentence. Giving the
> programmer more choices means the programmer has more to learn,
> and the compiler writer has more work to do. That's a good
> idea only if the alternatives are sufficiently useful.
(snip)


> [I have to agree. You want a language with lots and lots of choices,
> look at PL/I. -John]


Part of the design of PL/I was that you wouldn't have to learn all of
it to use it. That was used as the reason for not having reserved
words. (You have to at least know the word to know not to use it.)
Also, the huge list of reserved words for COBOL may have been on the
mind of PL/I designers.


But in many cases PL/I does better than modern Fortran as far as
giving a reasonable number of useful choices.


To keep compatible with older programs, many features from older
versions of Fortran have been kept. PL/I only allows passing arrays
by descriptor, but Fortran has assumed shape (descriptor), and assumed
size (left over, pretty much pass by reference).


-- glen

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