REXX FOR UNICOS

[David Huelsbeck]

>From article <1989Aug15.010010.16811 at agate.berkeley.edu>, by jerry at violet.berkeley.edu ( Jerry Berkman ):
 [...]
> 
> REXX may be better than COSMOS on CTSS, but that is irrelevant.
> The question is is it better than the C shell and Bourne shell
> which are distributed as part of UNICOS?

COSMOS is mighty primative as CTSS command languages go.  At Los Alamos it
was largely replaced (for new development anyway) by CCL which has subsequently
been replaced by FCL.  FCL is the best command languages I've worked with yet.
It makes the Unix shells look sort of pitiful; it makes COSMOS look pitiful 
too.  Why don't you folks have more up to date CTSS command languages?

I must admit that I'm not familiar with REXX.  However if it's anything
like its predecessors EXEC and EXEC II all I can say is YUCK. 

The standard Unix shells, UNICOS, COSMOS and CTSS are all things that I'm
well versed in.  My guess is that the shells will provide some of the 
functionality that CTSS command language users are used to and will demand
under UNICOS.  I don't think they'll go far enough though.  The Unix shells
have evolved to meet the demands of a particular type of user.  I don't think
most people switching from CTSS to UNICOS are of that type.  (I can't speak
for COS users)  Speaking as a person that has done quite a bit of work on
CTSS, Unix and UNICOS I can tell you that the mind set of most Unix users is
completely different than that of most CTSS users.  Both will find UNICOS
inconvenient (I have) but the trauma will be less for Unix users.  The people
used to working in a VMS environment and moving codes to either CTSS or COS
may actually be the lucky ones in this respect.

>And is it better than
> other shells likely to become a part of UNICOS, and how many shells
> do we really need?  I find C shell adequate for most uses, and
> Bourne shell if I really need efficiency.
> 

To allow users to write the sorts of controllers they're used to writing on
CTSS a new non-Unixish command language will *undoubtedly* be needed.  It's
not just a matter of retraining the poor, dumb, CTSS users to see things the
way all these enlightened Unix users have seen them for so long now.  Both
ways of operating and looking at problems have thier advantages.  The catch
is that those advantages carry more or less weight depending on the type of
work you want to do.  So Unix does turn out to be a nice platform for doing
software development on fairly small codes.  CTSS turns out to be a great
production environment for very large codes.  UNICOS will have to provide a
good environment for both.  At this point I still have serious doubts about
whether or not it can do both well.  It doesn't seem to do either well right
at the moment.

Ever wonder why CRI is calling it UNICOS 5.0 instead of UNICOS 0.5?  UCB has
been at it for a very long time and they're only up to 4.3 and most of their
products have worked for quite some time.

> Jerry Berkman
> U.C. Berkeley

Of course these are only the opinions of lowly hacker.  For official possitions
you'll have to talk to somebody much higher up.

-dph