phipps@fortune.UUCP (Clay Phipps) (03/09/84)
[My apologies to those who think this belongs in "net.lang"]
Yes, Dr. Brown learned PL/I from the IBM manuals and maybe a textbook,
with assistance from me and my colleagues at the U of F Computing Center.
The only PL/I textbooks that were worth any trouble at the time (~1973)
were Pollack and Sterling: *A Guide To PL/I*,
and Bates and Douglas: *Programming Language / One*.
I still have a mental image of him juggling listings and IBM manuals.
He definitely wasn't intimidated by the language or the manuals.
As I recall, he coded everything himself,
and incorporated any PL/I features in his programs that looked to him
as if they would help get his LOGLAN dictionary out sooner.
Sometimes, he *did* come for advice first and code second.
But more often, when he came to us with some problem, it was a case
of new code using some feature (e.g., "locate mode io") that didn't do
what he expected. What was particularly amazing was that this typically
would be the first time anyone had said anything to him
about using that particular feature,
and he was generally close enough to using it correctly
that a simple coding change would solve his problem.
I know that this is a heretical view, in my opinion,
the IBM PL/I manuals are very well written and organized
relative to their purpose as reference manuals
and to the sheer bulk of the language they had to describe.
By now, IBM has had *almost two decades* to refine them.
This view is held even more strongly now that I have had the *opportunity*
:-) to use the manuals of other manuafacturers.
The problem with IBM language manuals is learning
where in their hundreds of pages to find some needed information;
the problem with many of their competitor's manuals is learning
to get your work done despite the despair that comes from having to use
modest-sized and readable manuals that rarely have the information you need.
IBM PL/I manuals are *unquestionably* intimidating. They're not for novices.
I still have a set or two. Wonder what Ada manuals will be like ?
-- Clay Phipps
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