On Jul 11, 2018, at 5:47 PM, Ed Jaffe <[email protected]> wrote: > > I disagree. BASIC has iterations ('for' loops), forward and backward > branching, and subroutine call/return. These fundamental programming language > constructs are missing from JCL. This is why it's such a bad programming > language.
I don’t think it’s true that JCL is the worst programming language (with all due respect to Fred Brooks) because it isn’t really a programming language. Should it have been a programming language? Almost certainly, as shown by Unix scripting languages. But it isn’t, and although JCL does have many other deficiencies, it’s biggest problem is that people come to it expecting a programming language, and that’s not what it is. When I try to explain JCL, I describe it as a human-interface language for an obsolete input technology (punch cards) that was thrown together at the last minute rather than designed and exposes technical details you’d rather not have to know about, but other than that it’s great! An EXEC statement is like double-clicking on an app icon, DD statements are like open/save dialogs, etc. But it’s not programming. -- Pew, Curtis G [email protected] ITS Systems/Core/Administrative Services ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
