On Thursday, 1994-09-29  John Chase wrote to David Noon about "Pl/I"
as follows:

JC> Hmmm .... I read the IBM announcements on IBMLink, and I got the
JC> impression  that the discount only applied to PL/I Professional
JC> Edition  and not the Personal Edition.  I'd sure like to get the 
JC> Personal Edition, but can't really afford it right now.  I  have the
JC> CSet++, but having a devil of a time understanding  the C/C++
JC> language.  My background is primarily S/370 ASM  and PL/I, so trying
JC> to learn C/C++ is about like trying to  learn Greek or Russian.

Hi John,

I am not sure what the details of the discount policy were, I'm
afraid. I didn't read them too closely since I didn't have to pay for
Professional Edition - all licensed users of PL/I Package/2 received a
free upgrade. You could very well be correct that it didn't apply to
Personal Edition. [And since I am typing this on 1st October, it has
expired anyway.]

As for coming to grips with C/C++, I found the language(s) fairly
straightforward. The main bugbear is that every time you change
compilers you also have to change class libraries. (Unless you buy a
3rd party one.) In spite of Borland's mediocre compiler, I am looking
forward to the PM version of OWL; at least then I will have two
compilers with the same class library for GUI applications. Also, the
class libraries themselves are rather complex to learn and are usually
documented extremely poorly. Indeed, one of the common denominators of
C++ class libraries is their diabolical documentation.

If you do manage to save enough to buy PL/I for OS/2, you will find
that the language has been expanded over the mainframe implementation,
except for asynchronous I/O - which hasn't been implemented. For
general purpose programming, this is the PL/I compiler I wanted 20
years ago.

Regards

Dave

 * KWQ/2 1.2g * PL/I: Understatement is the purest form of eloquence.

--- Maximus/2 2.01wb