In article om,
bm wrote:

"Theo Markettos" wrote in message
...
John Rumm wrote:
On 19/06/2013 19:51, Bob Eager wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:19:40 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

The Commodore Amiga had an operating system (AmigaDOS) originally
written
in BCPL...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPOS

In the early days there were still vestiges of the BCPL ancestry in some
of the type definitions used when talking to AmigaDOS (the bit of the
system of tripos extraction). Most development being either C or 68K
assembler in those days, there were wrapper libraries to tidy up the
interfacing. They rewrote it in C after the first release though.

Would now be the time to introduce:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/bcpl4raspi.pdf

For 10 year olds?
WOW.

WOW. Indeed.

281 pages. Starts with setting up the Pi, installs emacs then you
write helloworld.bcpl ...

25+ years ago I write 1000s and 1000s of lines of BCPL on BBC Micros -
a whole factory automation system utilising a distributed network of
autonomous BBCs talking over Econet. I have Martin Richards books on
the subject, but to present a young person with BCPL today, and expect
them to work through a 280 page book about a language with no commercial
interest in these enlightened times of "apps" just isn't going to happen.

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

Gordon

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite recently. (I
installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle curiousity, and now
wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I haven't
had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

--
Rod

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 20/06/2013 10:06, Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.



A tiny bit of seeing it - can't even remember where!

Did VME/K not have SCL? I had thought the "single high level language
machine" concept which was a contributor to the design of VME had
implied its inclusion in every version!

What I rather liked was that once you saw how things worked, you could
actually handle virtual addresses within SCL - with a couple of trivial
Cobol programs. One of my first complicated apps. was an analyser for
fragmentation of files. Basically going through the FLF and identifying
how long the chains were, how many FLF entries, etc. And, later, an
index sequential file analyser which is how I came to understand the
index structure in detail, and why performance could be so dreadful.
Almost, but never quite actually did, write an I-S file re-indexer. Did
actually write some programs to pre-populate I-S files when the key
ranges could be anticipated and, by so doing, avoid long index overflow
chains.

--
Rod

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:47:40 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
handling.

I use it for command scripts, not web stuff!

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:18:12 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 10:06, Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

A tiny bit of seeing it - can't even remember where!

I started with it on OS/2...but it's pretty pervasive. I occasionally use
it on Windows, and a lot on FreeBSD - much nicer than shell scripts fro
complicated things. And there was AmigaREXX...

Did VME/K not have SCL? I had thought the "single high level language
machine" concept which was a contributor to the design of VME had
implied its inclusion in every version!

VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its control
language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE 3 than
anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF (rolling
average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The system that
replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours; it would even
recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a rebadged 1900 one).

What I rather liked was that once you saw how things worked, you could
actually handle virtual addresses within SCL

The system we moved onto treated all files as virtual memory - so you
could make byte changes to files at the command line if you wanted! We
used that system for 7 years before we replaced it with a VAXCluster.

We did get a "free" second OCP and move to proper SMP - which made quite
a difference.





--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 20/06/2013 11:09, Bob Eager wrote:
VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its control
language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE 3 than
anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF (rolling
average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The system that
replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours; it would even
recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a rebadged 1900 one).

We used to manage weeks MTBF as a rule. Indeed, basic stability improved
quite quickly for us. Certainly DFCs were capable of going mad from time
to time.

I started on GEORGE II! Saw a few bits of 3 and 4 material around the
world but never used them.

My only exposure to VME/K things was when documentation referred to it
and, later, when K was rolled up into VME2900 or whatever actually happened.

--
Rod

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:47:40 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
handling.

I use it for command scripts, not web stuff!

LOL you guys. You'll soon be typing in solid mnemonics and acronyms
I've only ever used machine code, assembler Z80, 8048 etc (all those hours)
and BASIC.
I remember playing startrek on a Teletype 33 and PDP-9 (i think).

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:22:47 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 11:09, Bob Eager wrote:
VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its
control language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE
3 than anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF
(rolling average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The
system that replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours;
it would even recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a
rebadged 1900 one).

We used to manage weeks MTBF as a rule. Indeed, basic stability improved
quite quickly for us. Certainly DFCs were capable of going mad from time
to time.

VME/K never really improved. We dumped it when it was going backwards in
functionality.

I started on GEORGE II! Saw a few bits of 3 and 4 material around the
world but never used them.

I was a GEORGE II programmer/operator in vacations.

My only exposure to VME/K things was when documentation referred to it
and, later, when K was rolled up into VME2900 or whatever actually
happened.

They dumped VME/K and moved everyone to VME/B, renaming it VME2900. Glad
we never experienced that.




--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:56:04 +0100, bm wrote:

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:47:40 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no
yearning whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started
this thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol.
:-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But
we dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after
three years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
handling.

I use it for command scripts, not web stuff!

LOL you guys. You'll soon be typing in solid mnemonics and acronyms
I've only ever used machine code, assembler Z80, 8048 etc (all those
hours) and BASIC.

I started with BASIC. Lost count of the number of different assemblers.

I remember playing startrek on a Teletype 33 and PDP-9 (i think).

Me too, although it was on a PDP-10 at Essex University.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:22:47 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 11:09, Bob Eager wrote:
VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its
control language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE
3 than anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF
(rolling average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The
system that replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours;
it would even recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a
rebadged 1900 one).

We used to manage weeks MTBF as a rule. Indeed, basic stability improved
quite quickly for us. Certainly DFCs were capable of going mad from time
to time.

VME/K never really improved. We dumped it when it was going backwards in
functionality.

I started on GEORGE II! Saw a few bits of 3 and 4 material around the
world but never used them.

I was a GEORGE II programmer/operator in vacations.

Aieeee! You have reminded me of the horror. Fortunately Manchester also had
CDC and I used the Cyber 170-730 in preference to the ICL thing.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/

On 20/06/13 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this thread.

Really?, If someone wants to pay me £100k a year to write z80/8086
assembler, I wouldn't have any trouble getting enthusiastic.

I enjoy writing C so BCPL would presumably only be a subset of that..i
did get a book on it once.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite recently. (I
installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle curiousity, and now
wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I haven't
had an answer.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Again, I used to use it on the Amiga - was really useful (don't know how
close ARexx was to plain REXX...)

Darren

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.


Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

Darren (awaiting the python fans now :-))

On 20/06/13 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string handling.


I find the lack of types the biggest source of bugs and real difficulty
in doing what I want.

Especially in string handling.

And most especially when I wasted two days in discovering that two
javacsript interpretations treated exactly the same web page in two
completely different ways, in one interpreting a number as a string, and
in the other as an integer number.

loose typing hides sloppiness. And makes it impossioble to tell teh
interpreter what it is supposed to do. Yes I rtried all te so called
casting functions.

It reminded me of going back to a bug ridden C compiler for a 6809 that
simply didnt understand pointers to functions. Let alone an array of them

What I wanted was to call a function based on a value in a ( register)
variable.
In assembler. left shift the number by one (on an 8 but machine) take
teh base of the array of addresses of subroutines, add that to the
number, load ta 16 bit register with te value of waht te other 16 bit
register pointd to, push the instruction pointer into the stack and jump
to the address in the last register. Even if it didn't have that
instruction, then push that address in the stack and issue a RET :-)

No way would that compiler do it. I ended up with if (value==0) then
x(); else if (value==1) then y(); ......
I suppose it wasn't such a bad way to code it space wise..

With assembler, you always knew the machine would do what you told it
exactly, barring issue with interrupts.
The moment you put a compiler or interpreter in there, someone elses
bugs and someone else ideas about what your code means are in the way.
If I were running missions critical apps, I might prototype them in a
high level language, but I'd want them written in assembler finally.




-- Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the
least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and
where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or
succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the
confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

On 20/06/13 14:04, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.

Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

PERL?

I have never seen a language that took so long to produce so little of
any use, or ran slower.

Darren (awaiting the python fans now :-))



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

On 20/06/2013 09:18, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about CORAL 66 ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 20/06/2013 10:06, Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Amiga AREXX was quite good fun - most apps had AREXX ports to which to
could direct commands and interact with them programmatically. Very nice
for automating workflows with multiple unrelated programs. A bit like
being able to program office apps with VBS, but since it was a standard
part of the platform, not limited to just a subset of apps.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 20/06/2013 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But
we dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after
three years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string handling.

Never liked weakly typed language myself... ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 20/06/2013 12:09, Bob Eager wrote:

I started with BASIC. Lost count of the number of different assemblers.

I remember having a slightly strange conversation with with an IBM type
at a recruitment exhibition once many years ago... they had a big sign
up saying Assembler programmers wanted. So I thought I would find out a
bit more, gave them a CV to look at, and after a few minutes perusal,
she said "but I can't see any assembler experience here?". So I directed
her at the section titled "Low level languages" and a moderately long
list of processor architectures. Realisation slowly dawned that to IBM
people "Assembler" was an IBM specific technology, and is apparently the
only low level language that exists - she had absolutely no concept that
assembler was a generic term, or that the concepts of machine languages
were similar across platforms or even it seems, that "other" computers
even had machine languages. ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.

Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

The correct answer for any one person is to use what they're most
comfortable with. I use PHP as a scripting language too - a lot of my
automated billing software is written in PHP - as a command liney script
rather than a web backend. It was easier than writing it in C.

Gordon

On 20/06/13 15:00, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
(D.M.Chapman) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.

Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.

You mean someone actually DESIGNED it?

It always looked to me like some sweaty nerds late night output
surrounded by beer cans and empty pizza boxes where at 3 a.m. he would
jerk off, and go to bed and say 'wow that would be a really cool way of
doing something simple in a massively complicated and impressive way:
I'll add that tomorow after my dull job testing banking software."




--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 20/06/13 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this thread.

Really?, If someone wants to pay me £100k a year to write z80/8086
assembler, I wouldn't have any trouble getting enthusiastic.

I enjoy writing C so BCPL would presumably only be a subset of that..i
did get a book on it once.

I went from C (learned on a PDP11/40 to keep it relevant ;-) to BCPL,
however there wasn't much choice - no decent C compiler for the Beeb at
the time, nor the Z80 that was the control systems predecessor. I did a
lot in Pascal (on the Z80 system, and Apple) before I saw the light and
went for the Beebs for that project though...

I'm sure that if I had to, I could pickup BCPL again, but fortunately
I don't have to.

Gordon

On 20/06/13 15:14, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
(D.M.Chapman) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)
No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.
That would be an ecumenical matter.

But anyone who thinks PHP is a good idea is on pretty dodgy ground. )


Id say its better than perl or bash...I tend to do things in PHP until
I run into the limits of it, and then spend longer, but produce a better
job, in C.

I cant say I have ever felt the need to learn PERL or bash. either its
so simple the most basic bash covers it, or its so complicated it would
take me far longer to drive a new language than write it in one I
already know.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

On Thursday 20 June 2013 14:04 D.M.Chapman wrote in uk.d-i-y:

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.


Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

+1

Darren (awaiting the python fans now :-))

Meh...

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thursday 20 June 2013 14:15 The Natural Philosopher wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On 20/06/13 14:04, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.

Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

PERL?

I have never seen a language that took so long to produce so little of
any use, or ran slower.


I wrote an entire application made up of 5 daemons in Perl and it was plenty
fast enough, clean and *very* reliable. If Perl is "wrong" then Tomcat/Java
apps must be really wrong as my perl was lighter, easier to hack on and way
faster than any Tomcat app I have every seen.

I also use it for all manner of utility programs from LDAP/Kerberos clients
to XML::RPC to general reporting (wot it was really designed for).


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thursday 20 June 2013 15:00 Tim Streater wrote in uk.d-i-y:

In article ,
(D.M.Chapman) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.

Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.


No they don't. PHP designers (if you can call them that) need a good smack.

Perl has a well defined and elegant syntax. "Compact" != "Bad"
--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thursday 20 June 2013 15:26 The Natural Philosopher wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On 20/06/13 15:14, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
(D.M.Chapman) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash
at times)
No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good
smack.
That would be an ecumenical matter.

But anyone who thinks PHP is a good idea is on pretty dodgy ground. )


Id say its better than perl or bash...

http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09...of-bad-design/

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thursday 20 June 2013 15:12 The Natural Philosopher wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On 20/06/13 15:00, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
(D.M.Chapman) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.

Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.

You mean someone actually DESIGNED it?


Don't insult Larry Wall... He's forgotten more than some language designers
ever knew.


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:49:57 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

On 20/06/2013 12:09, Bob Eager wrote:

I started with BASIC. Lost count of the number of different assemblers.

I remember having a slightly strange conversation with with an IBM type
at a recruitment exhibition once many years ago... they had a big sign
up saying Assembler programmers wanted. So I thought I would find out a
bit more, gave them a CV to look at, and after a few minutes perusal,
she said "but I can't see any assembler experience here?". So I directed
her at the section titled "Low level languages" and a moderately long
list of processor architectures. Realisation slowly dawned that to IBM
people "Assembler" was an IBM specific technology, and is apparently the
only low level language that exists - she had absolutely no concept that
assembler was a generic term, or that the concepts of machine languages
were similar across platforms or even it seems, that "other" computers
even had machine languages. ;-)

Yes, the clue was always in the capitalisation - which wasn't that
obvious especially when it appeared at the start of a sentence!

IBM did that with other generic terms - JCL and VM being the most
commonly confused.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:39:05 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

On 20/06/2013 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no
yearning whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started
this thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol.
:-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But
we dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after
three years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
handling.

Never liked weakly typed language myself... ;-)

BCPL was untyped!



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-18, Bob Minchin wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...

Fancy a job? :-)


http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...827-Greetings-
from-GE-Canada

http://goo.gl/177Iv

Darren

Golly. I used to write C on one of those..

C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...

And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.

If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can recommend
this language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11

Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"

I'm not sure if we've had this conversation before, but we may have been
contemporaneous at UKC - I graduated in 1975 and spent far too much time
in the Computing Lab and nothing like enough in the Biology Lab, which
accounts for both the class of my degree and my current career. Prof.
Brown took my undergrad computing course, which was optional and designed
for people who already knew how to program. (I'd learned FORTRAN at school.)


I was there from 72-75 as an undergraduate. I was up the other end of
the Natural Sciences intake spectrum. I initially signed up for
Electronics but changed to Computing and Cybernetics at the end of the
first year.
I vaguely remember someone called Hugh in Eliot College but I think he
was a mathematician.

Bob

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:56:45 +0100, Bob Minchin wrote:

Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-18, Bob Minchin
wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...

Fancy a job? :-)


http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...ead.php?37827-
Greetings-
from-GE-Canada

http://goo.gl/177Iv

Darren

Golly. I used to write C on one of those..

C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...

And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.

If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can
recommend this language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11

Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"

I'm not sure if we've had this conversation before, but we may have
been contemporaneous at UKC - I graduated in 1975 and spent far too
much time in the Computing Lab and nothing like enough in the Biology
Lab, which accounts for both the class of my degree and my current
career. Prof.
Brown took my undergrad computing course, which was optional and
designed for people who already knew how to program. (I'd learned
FORTRAN at school.)


I was there from 72-75 as an undergraduate. I was up the other end of
the Natural Sciences intake spectrum. I initially signed up for
Electronics but changed to Computing and Cybernetics at the end of the
first year.
I vaguely remember someone called Hugh in Eliot College but I think he
was a mathematician.

Did you know Tony West? Now CTO at Cisco in San Jose.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

Are you mad? Have you taken complete leave of your senses? Have you gone
completely hatstand? (and similar expressions of astonishment ad
nauseam).

*boggles*

The only real place where you can criticise PHP is that the names of the
library functions are a bit of a mess. Well, yawn.

The *only* place??? Are you mad??

How about changing parameter ordering on a minor release?

register globals? How was that ever a good idea/design?

We logged a bug with php (well, we've logged many) and got told by a
developer that "we should expect problems if we use an exotic system
like Solaris"

Just a few off the top of my head :-) I'm sure I can think of pages and
pages of criticism for PHP if I try

You've seen the double claw hammer? :-)

Meanwhile perl seems
to need a variety of characters to introduce different things such as
simple variable, strings, arrays, etc, not to mention witticisms such as
$_ and friends. These are shortcuts that you have to learn like Latin
conjugation and hic, haec, hoc. Just as much rhyme and reason.

It does have a learning cliff, but it's not that high. Also, most of those
odd variables have friendly names these days

CPAN has it's issues, but PEAR? Oh dear...

Still, I'm posting this using rn so I guess that puts be firmly in the
Perl camp...

Darren

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:

Anyway, this is a futile discussion. I suggest we declare a score-draw
and go off to the pub.

Sounds like a plan

*opens beer*

Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:56:45 +0100, Bob Minchin wrote:

Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-18, Bob Minchin
wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...

Fancy a job? :-)


http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...ead.php?37827-
Greetings-
from-GE-Canada

http://goo.gl/177Iv

Darren

Golly. I used to write C on one of those..

C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...

And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.

If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can
recommend this language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11

Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"

I'm not sure if we've had this conversation before, but we may have
been contemporaneous at UKC - I graduated in 1975 and spent far too
much time in the Computing Lab and nothing like enough in the Biology
Lab, which accounts for both the class of my degree and my current
career. Prof.
Brown took my undergrad computing course, which was optional and
designed for people who already knew how to program. (I'd learned
FORTRAN at school.)


I was there from 72-75 as an undergraduate. I was up the other end of
the Natural Sciences intake spectrum. I initially signed up for
Electronics but changed to Computing and Cybernetics at the end of the
first year.
I vaguely remember someone called Hugh in Eliot College but I think he
was a mathematician.

Did you know Tony West? Now CTO at Cisco in San Jose.

No, I don't recall that name. There was (is!) a Tony Jeffree and I am
still in touch with him.
Living in the college environment you tended to know the group of people
in the same college, meeting over meals and in the college socially and
a second group on your course - I think there were less than 20 on my
course.

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:52:37 +0100, Bob Minchin wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:56:45 +0100, Bob Minchin wrote:

Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-18, Bob Minchin
wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...

Fancy a job? :-)


http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...ead.php?37827-
Greetings-
from-GE-Canada

http://goo.gl/177Iv

Darren

Golly. I used to write C on one of those..

C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...

And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.

If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can
recommend this language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11

Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"

I'm not sure if we've had this conversation before, but we may have
been contemporaneous at UKC - I graduated in 1975 and spent far too
much time in the Computing Lab and nothing like enough in the Biology
Lab, which accounts for both the class of my degree and my current
career. Prof.
Brown took my undergrad computing course, which was optional and
designed for people who already knew how to program. (I'd learned
FORTRAN at school.)


I was there from 72-75 as an undergraduate. I was up the other end of
the Natural Sciences intake spectrum. I initially signed up for
Electronics but changed to Computing and Cybernetics at the end of the
first year.
I vaguely remember someone called Hugh in Eliot College but I think he
was a mathematician.

Did you know Tony West? Now CTO at Cisco in San Jose.

No, I don't recall that name. There was (is!) a Tony Jeffree and I am
still in touch with him.
Living in the college environment you tended to know the group of people
in the same college, meeting over meals and in the college socially and
a second group on your course - I think there were less than 20 on my
course.

I think he was the year before you; there were about four. Still in
contact with him and one other, although I was doing Electronics at the
time.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 20/06/2013 17:10, Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:39:05 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

On 20/06/2013 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no
yearning whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started
this thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol.
:-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But
we dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after
three years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
handling.

Never liked weakly typed language myself... ;-)

BCPL was untyped!

Not too surprising when you look at how the original K&R style C turned
out... did not like that much either until it at least got as far as
ANSI and had typed parameters ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 20:54:04 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

On 20/06/2013 17:10, Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:39:05 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

On 20/06/2013 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson wrote:

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no
yearning whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started
this thread.

Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)

BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
haven't had an answer.

I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol.
:-)

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But
we dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after
three years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
handling.

Never liked weakly typed language myself... ;-)

BCPL was untyped!

Not too surprising when you look at how the original K&R style C turned
out... did not like that much either until it at least got as far as
ANSI and had typed parameters ;-)

Surely it had typed parameters before that....just not in the actual
parameter list.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 20/06/2013 16:37, Tim Watts wrote:
Perl has a well defined and elegant syntax. "Compact" != "Bad"

Did you ever see APL?

Andy