SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

<< Previous Message <<

Date:	Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:34:21 PST8
From:	Sheridan George <s-geo@usa.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Trip preparation

Content Type: text/plain

Hey! Steven, lighten up. I wrote that in jest; well mostly in jest. I figured the "what does this
do" statement was boilerplate (confirmed by you) but I thought it was funny the way I wrote it. I
had a "giggling" good time writing it. However, the partly in jest is true. I will need more help
figuring out the editor than most others because my learning curve will be a bit steeper. I barely
read C. So I have to do three things all at once - become more familiar with C, try to figure out
what the code is supposed to do, and understand how that piece of code fits into the whole picture.

Lynn H. Maxson wrote:
> Sheridan, I can appreciate your confusion. Just be patient.
> We will get to it. I did notice that jEdit supported PL/I. LPEX
> does as well. That means we have a least two sources for
> the syntax rules.

That's good. Always nice to have extra examples.
>
> At one time I compiled the entire .h libraries, actually their
> PL/I equivalents which came with the VisualAge PL/I products.
> It took me a number of iterations with "define" switches to
> insure that I got them all, essentially the entire set of OS/2
> APIs.

I'm not sure how that fits in with our "homework" assignment. Is that something I should consider
doing to help get me up to speed?
>
> We had two projects underway, both of which have since
> grown dormant, to write an OS/2 clone. I won't go into how
> one project became two, but both needed ultimately to
> include all the OS/2 APIs.

Being able to have/make all the OS/2 APIs makes sense. Although, device drivers probably require
only a subset of the APIs.
>
> After compiling all the APIs I had a full cross-reference and
> attribute listing of all API names as well as all variables
> associated with them. I assume you could do the same with C,
> but I chose to do it with PL/I.

It sounds like this cross-reference and attribute list would be quite useful. Perhaps a demo on how
to go about it should be a meeting topic.
>
>snip>
> We could when we get to the syntax checking of PL/I add the
> feature of the "range" attribute. At some point then we could
> add the list aggregate as a data type along with "assertion"
> statements in addition to the standard "assignment"
> statements.

Good. A bit more of the road map.

Lynn, I like your hypothesis. It fits my idea that literate programming is a step in the right
direction - one source document. The idea of having one source document that can give more than the
program and its documentation/explanation sounds even better. So, I'm ready to go. What's next,
fearless leader?

Hopefully this exercise will give me a better understanding of the art and science of programming,
to boot. If our road map takes five or so years to implement and I then spend three more years
teaching the new stuff I learn I'll have to put off retiring until age 75 instead of my planned 70.
But that isn't all bad. I enjoy what I'm doing.

Sheridan

=====================================================

To unsubscribe from this list, send an email message
to "steward@scoug.com". In the body of the message,
put the command "unsubscribe scoug-programming".

For problems, contact the list owner at
"postmaster@scoug.com".

=====================================================

Return to [ 23 | February | 2006 ]

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.