LOL! I'm reminded that DYL-280II was advertised as a 4GL, with English-like syntax. Neither is true, to my mind. I like DYL-280II, and taught classes in it at my employer of the time (Volvo Truck NA) as well as workshops at the DYLAKOR conferences. But it's not a 4GL.
Well, not in the sense I usually associate with the term. Actually, let me ask the group what you think about that: 1GL: Machine code; programming in binary and hex. (Also octal, if you think in Unix, I suppose, which I don't.) 2GL: Assemblers of various flavors; each statement in assembler corresponds to a single machine instruction, but using mnemonics that make it easier to remember how to say what you intend. 3GL: Algorithmic languages. Most of us use these: COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, VB, Pascal, you get the idea. The feature of algorithmic languages is that they have a certain severe syntax, each token meaning a very particular thing, but arranged in a way that allows a human to clump several machine instructions together into conceptual groups. Calls to a subroutine can be expressed in one line rather than five; assignment statements the same. 4GL: This was supposed to be the point at which we could just talk to a computer and let it would figure out what we mean. I gather there've been some attempts at this that generate surprisingly good results - with surprising gaps in the system's ability to comprehend how we think. Yeah, yeah, I realize what that really means is that ~we~ often fail to notice how we think. But we don't really have a 4GL by this definition...do we? Still a dream, I gather. Not that I'm complaining. It may be a dream that can never be realized, simply because human thoughts are imprecise and cannot be acted upon precisely until the human has organized them better. Using a 3GL is one way to force that organization. Just a thought. --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* I never noticed them actually using English words in the finals of the spelling bee. They seem to have reached a point where the spellers can spell all the English words and have moved on to words from around the world that may once have been used in an English sentence. -Dogsbody at Norton's Patrick O'Brian forum */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Monday, June 8, 2020 22:19 It's so nice of COBOL to be written in common language so any English speaker can intuitively grasp it correctly. --- On Mon, 8 Jun 2020 20:50:12 -0500, Joe Monk wrote: >In this case, because we are PERFORMing THRU, then GO TO exit, merely >causes an iterate. > >--- On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 7:36 PM Frank Swarbrick wrote: >> GO TO to an "exit" procedure (that is, a procedure that terminates >> unconditionally terminates the program) is, in my mind, acceptable as >> well. In fact, if you try to "perform" a "terminal" exit procedure the >> compiler will give you a warning that your "calling" procedure will never >> reach its exit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
