Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!i2pn.org!i2pn2.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Continuations Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:45:39 +0000 Organization: Rocksolid Light Message-ID: References: <47689j5gbdg2runh3t7oq2thodmfkalno6@4ax.com> <116d9j5651mtjmq4bkjaheuf0pgpu6p0m8@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: i2pn2.org; logging-data="3623971"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@i2pn2.org"; posting-account="65wTazMNTleAJDh/pRqmKE7ADni/0wesT78+pyiDW8A"; User-Agent: Rocksolid Light X-Rslight-Site: $2y$10$5/CrhX1JWyxS11rzgI7cY.QONg2rbOfnSxDK9VObWX1qkuVBHzAem X-Rslight-Posting-User: ac58ceb75ea22753186dae54d967fed894c3dce8 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 Bytes: 2676 Lines: 41 On Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:09:44 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote: > "Stephen Fuld" writes: >>MitchAlsup1 wrote: >> >>> >>> Especially the COBOL stuff like EDIT and EDIT-and-MARK. >> >> >>Regarding EDIT, etc., I think there are three possibilities: >> >>1. They were a bad idea from the start and never should have been put >>into S/360. >> >>2. Putting them into S/360 was the right decision at the time, but the >>changing technology (i.e. they wouldn't fit into the initial CISC >>microprocessors and RISC showed the functionality could be done other >>ways) made putting them into newer designs a bad idea. >> >>3. Putting them into S/360 was the right decision at the time but the >>workloads changed. There was less requirement for things like actually >>printing checks and general ledger reports, and programmers moved away >>from COBOL, which was where EDIT was a natural fit, to languages where >>there wasn't as natural fit, so not putting EDIT into newer CPUs was >>the right decision. >> >>I suspect it was mostly number 3, but I think number 2 was a part of it. > > I also suspect it was (3). Burroughs medium systems (B3500 etc) used > the edit instruction (EDT) extensively for COBOL. I suspect that as compute power grew, the kinds of things we wanted out of EDIT changed. negative numbers printed in red negative numbers surrounded with parens (-123.45) decimal point and comma LOCAL selection NaN INFINITY ... making a fixed EDIT instruction fade into insignificance.