Pascal not considered harmful - was Re: Rich kids are into COBOL

[Dave G4UGM]

I don't know about on MVS but on VM there is a comprehensive system which is
fully integrated with the editor XEDIT. You do have to create a reference
for each change, but once that's done you can just edit away and the editor
maintains a separate file of changes for that module. 

One major problem with the system is that it only works for card images , so
columns 73-80 are used as sequence numbers. When a deck has to be
re-sequenced a kind of madness ensues.

Dave
G4UGM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck
> Guzis
> Sent: 20 February 2015 07:36
> To: General at classiccmp.org; Discussion at classiccmp.org:On-Topic and Off-
> Topic Posts
> Subject: Re: Pascal not considered harmful - was Re: Rich kids are into
COBOL
> 
> On 02/19/2015 08:23 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
> 
> > Nope.  It was (and still is) how I write code (sit down and compose at
> > the keyboard).  One of my old bosses at IBM once said "Yea, Guy just
> > waves his hands over the keyboard and programs come out".
> 
> That would have been impossible in my case, unless I had the most
> prodigious eidetic memory in history.
> 
> Writing code almost always involved using an on-disk or -tape source code
> library.  Even if it was new code, there were significant advantages to
> creating a library then modifying it as one progressed.
> 
> One would typically work with a bound listing or listings and work out the
> control system directives to update the existing code base.
> Remember, this was in the day of batch processing with almost no access to
> terminals.  Everything happened on the keypunch.
> 
> So for one to remember all of the correction set IDs and sequence numbers
> for a group of programs or system programs would be more than impressive-
> -it'd probably merit a vivisection.
> 
> Here was one SCCS utility, UPDATE, used at CDC:
> 
> http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-
> stuttgart.de/pdf/cdc/cyber/software/60342500H_UPDATE_Reference_Jan78
> .pdf
> 
> Another was MODIFY, used on KRONOS, but basically the same functionality
> as UPDATE.
> 
> So IBM had no SCCS for their system code?  That's mind-boggling.
> 
> --Chuck
>