Re: PL/I nostalgia

robin <robin51@dodo.com.au> wrote:
>> [The code fron PL/I F was comparablw to Fortran G, but much worse than
>> Fortran H. The PL/I optimizing compiler's code was better, but still
>> not as good as Fortran H and its descendants. -John]


Well, the dynamically allocated variables and save areas for PL/I are
naturally slower than static allocated Fortran IV.


Also, many PL/I features naturally don't optimize as well as Fortran.


> Finally I have to hand Tucker's "Programming Languages".


I have one of those. Not my favorite, but not bad.
"History of Programming Languages" is better.


> Case study 2, matrix inversion with 20 x 20 data:


What page is that on?


> with IBM 370-145 FORTRAN (G) execution time 8.41 secs
> (H) execution time 5.28 secs.


> With IBM 370-145 PL/I (F) execution time 6.31 secs
> PL/I Optimiser execution time 5.77 secs.


> (refer to pages 112 and 279 for times)


Not in the second edition.


> However, in the case of the PL/I program, Tucker //omitted// to supply
> the option (REORDER) which is necessary to obtain full optimisation.
> Thus, the PL/I optimiser execution obtained was larger than it should
> have been.


When did that appear? I don't remember it in (F).


> It is clear that the times for FORTRAN (G) and PL/I(F) are equivalent,
> and that FORTRAN(H) and PL/I optimiser times are equivalent.


I suppose. A better test would use a larger matrix, though.


> As well as that, FORTRAN (H) required c. 150K of memory (i.e. a 256K
> machine) which was far more than the 128K that we had initially,
> whereas PL/I (F) required only 64K and IIRC FORTRAN (G) a little more.


If you really want to be fair, add the compilation time to the
run time, then see which one is faster.


-- glen

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