Calling all current/former CMS users

Alex Martelli staff at cadlab.sublink.ORG
Sat Apr 7 07:14:34 AEST 1990


> My only question is, why would anyone *WANT* to use Xedit or REXX under unix,
> they both suck (just like the IBM OS they came from), and anyone who has

Oh come on now.  Say anything you want against VM, and *almost* anything
against Xedit, but REXX...!  First of all, it's very unpatriotic of you
to attack it, since it's the brainchild of a Briton, Mike Cowlishaw:-).
Do you REALLY prefer such yankee stuff as sh, csh and awk?-)

Secondly, the world already has an example of Rexx taking hold in places
completely alien to IBM - the AREXX implementation for the Amiga even got
praise from IBM-basher-in-chief Jerry Pournelle (probably thanks to the
fact that he was unaware of the IBM taint on it...:-).  I would put it on
a par with nawk, probably better for a programming beginner although not
as good for a very experienced user for most generalish applications.

> -- I used to work for IBM, I *had* to deal with their gross OS -- not any more!
Why, so did I, and while I would never go back to it from Unix, I sure miss a
few features - the linker which auto-searches object files and global libraries,
for example - and REXX is surely not the least of these.

-- 
Alex Martelli - CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Stalingrado 45, Bologna, Italia
Email: (work:) staff at cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex at am.sublink.org
Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; 
Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only; any time of day or night).



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