Part five!
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Part five!
Despite our describing some of PL/I’s features as COBOL-like, there’s one very noticeable difference between the two languages. A bizarre concept in the design of COBOL, which PL/I did not mimic, was that statements should look like English language sentences.
BACK IN THE USSR
It’s notable that some versions of PL/I featured recursion, but not all later versions. Given that each time a recursive function was called, the values of all its local variables were placed on the stack, this would rapidly eat up a valuable commodity in those early days: memory.
PL/I’S IMMEDIATE FAMILY
PL/I is certainly not dead and gone – reportedly, the language is still used for new developments, commonly for systems programming, primarily on IBM z/Architecture mainframes.
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OUR EXPERT
Mike Bedford is never one to turn down a new challenge. He discovered that trying PL/I is an interesting experience, but there are undoubtedly better languages today for real-world applications.