The availability of free C compilers was a big part of it. High memory prices may have played a role as well; early C compilers were a lot smaller.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Rupert Reynolds <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2025 6:41 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: IBM-MAIN Digest - 7 Sep 2025 to 8 Sep 2025 (#2025-245) External Message: Use Caution I always like PL/I, and never understood why it was overlooked so much. True it was big for its time, but the last time I looked gcc was bigger. I had to work on a message-driven system many years ago and almost all of it was PL/I. Roops --- "Mundus sine Caesaribus" On Wed, 10 Sept 2025, 07:20 Gabe Goldberg, <[email protected]> wrote: > Decades ago I used PL/I multitasking to recover/read data from a failing > disk drive that was about to be decommissioned. Mother task started > daughter task to read data, notice when it ABENDed, calculate next > alphanumeric database record key to try to read, and start reader task > again. It recovered enough data to make whatever government agency owned it > happy. PL/I was (is?) a great language, especially using Optimizing and > Checkout compilers together. > > Robert Prins<[email protected]> 9 Sep 2025 wrote: > > On Tue, 9 Sept 2025 at 15:15, Gary Weinhold < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > Although perhaps Pipes will never be used much on z/OS, with PL/I and > > now COBOL v6.3 supporting multi-threading, the performance system > > programmers will soon have to be aware that application programmers may > > introduce multi-tasking in batch job steps and possibly TSO. > > Parenthetically, over 20 years ago we worked with a credit card > > processor who had a production multitasking application under TSO. > > The old OS PL/I Optimizing Compiler supported multi-tasking out-of-the-box, > at least 35 years ago, and I actually used that feature to make two > long-running programs operator interruptible, probably the most simple type > of multitasking possible, just start a second task that issues a WTOR and > then goes to sleep. > > -- > Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, [email protected] > 3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042 (703) 204-0433 > LinkedIn:http://www.linkedin.com/in/gabegold > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
