Hallo David!

 TE>>Is this a joke or do you mean this serious?

 DN> It is serious. 

Intersting. Is this a team like Team OS/2, i.E. does it - besides those
engaged IBMers - also have members like private customers, small business
customres, and all the sort of customers that IBM does not really care
about?

 TE>>I would be interested in having PL/I or a compiler derived from that 
 TE>>for use at home (I have been working at an IBM side where 
 TE>>they used a special purpose language that has been derived 
 TE>>from PL/I, and I liked it),

 DN> Probably PL/X, also known as PL/S or PL/AS. It is a mighty spiffy 
 DN> language for writing operating system code.

No, it was PL.8, a language originally developed at Austin Laboratories for
VM/CMS and AIX. It really was "spiffy", though most IBM locations
have replaced it in favour of PL/X, I think. I would be interested to know
if anyone knows PL.8 or even works with it.

 DN> This is yet another gripe about the marketing of PL/I compilers. They 
 DN> should allow academic institutions preferential pricing, otherwise nobody 
 DN> will offer PL/I training courses.

Yes, but it is only logical for IBM ot do soe if they (i.E. those types that
have to decide this) do see a future in PL/I. For most marketing types,
though, it is illogical to support yet another programming languages, yet
another operating system, etc. A marketing type can't understand why any
programming language should be better than any other, just like he can't
understand why any operating system should be better than any other, or why
the world needs mainframes at all. He only sees the costs that have to be paid
for when people that already know C from school have to learn PL/I when they
enter certain parts at IBM, so it is only logical for him to strive to kill of
PL/I. Of course PL/I will never in the foreseeable future will be killed off
or die, just like the other nice things that make the difference between IBM
and any other company, but the marketing guys will neer realice the magic.

They will even feel good when they put those technologies to maintenance
mode, raise prices ad infinitum, and see PL/I, OS/2, Mainframes, Vnet, and
all the "old" or not so old iron only as means to pull any amount
of money from some customers that still depend on it, while they do not
realize the potential in these technologieses to really make a better world
 (and even more profit for IBM) if they would be sold to the broader
masses.

Viele Gr��e,
Tobias

--- Msged/2 TE 06 (pre)