Re: choice of character for relational division

Marshall wrote:
> ...
> So ... what kind of code was this? If it was assembly, I could
> see that working, because the format is so regular. If it's
> anything in the algol family, I don't see how it could work.
> There is formatting in the comments. There is formatting
> in where the line breaks happen in long source lines. None
> of this info is preserved in object form. And if it was, how
> would editing be enabled such that everyone could edit
> this information according to their own style, and yet others
> could see it in *their* style? I don't see any way to make
> that work without discarding some set of things programmers
> are used to having.
>

No vi or such. Only practical way to write code was to use system's built-in editor (which was written in the same language app developers used, although it was quite easy to generate object with the system or for that matter any other tool you liked, as long as you knew the object format which was trivial compared to what most people were used to then as well as today. Tiny number of verbs, all table oriented, Get, Forall, Insert, Replace, Delete. Displays were sets of tables, IMS databases were tables, along with all the big-name DB products (to help encourage migration), although the preferred storage was the system's native organizations. Funny structure to code, conditions preceded all imperatives using what looked like a graphical truth table but was really just a disguised if then else arrangement. Programmer's interface was a table 'row'. Not relational by Codd's standards although I know for certain that he was prepared to be its architect around 1990 or so, money no problem, a little issue of titles put the kibosh on it.

However, none of that matters to my point - object code was stored in system's own tables which were accessible to any programmer, not just the system itself. The point is that original source code was not saved. Some users complained that they couldn't add comments but mostly we ignored them. To this day, I think source code management systems are a bizarre unnecessity.

It was a big-ticket "enterprise" product, still in use under a different name. I don't want to mention that as I still have a one or two old friends whose income depends on it and I have nothing but bad things to say about how subsequent management misunderstood and mangled it. p Received on Mon Apr 02 2007 - 05:42:57 CEST