Re: The tragedy of SQL

Hi Michael,

Appropriate comments interspersed below.

I'm happy writing SQL and moderately competent using it.  But like all
the languages I've used, without exception, it has its pain points.

Cheers,
Gavin

On 15/09/21 11:25, Michael Nolan wrote:
> Of all the languages I wrote in, I think SNOBOL was the most fun to
> write in, and LISP the least fun.  Control Data

I once read the first 40 pages of a SNOBOL manuel, but unfortunately
never got the opportunity to try it out.

> assembler language
> programming was probably the most precise, because you could crash the
> OS with a single mis-placed character, something I did more than once.

I knew a senior tech programmer who inadvertently tried to rewind a disc
back to BT and switch to 800 BPI, fortunately only his program crashed.

Another time the memory protection was disabled (ICL no longer had the
capacity to fix it) on our ICL 4/50 MainFrame and someone wrote a
program to write 'J' into an area of memory.  That was legitimate, but
it had a bug which caused it to write into more memory than it should
have...  The machine crashed.  Our ICL 4/50 was the last surviving
operational machine of its type in the world.

Our main machines were two ICL 4/72's each having a single fast 2MHz
processor and a massive 1 MB of core memory with a battery of big
exchangeable disks each with a whopping 60 MB of capacity & tape drives
for 12" reels.

>
> In a graduate-level course, we studied ALGOL-68, which had so many
> things in it that I'm not sure anybody ever actually implemented the
> full language.  (But then again, has anybody implemented EVERYTHING in
> the SQL standard?)

I learnt ALGOL-68 from a manual written in Backus-Naur notation on my
own initiative.  Tried to write a simple statistics program, never
finished it.  That was before I really understood the value of rigorous
indenting standards.

>
> COBOL has strange verbs like 'move corresponding' that could
> accomplish complicated tasks in a few lines but you have to be careful
> that you knew what you were asking for!

In our site that was banned as being too dangerous.

And how about the 'lovely' ALTER GOTO construct???

Children don't try to use these constructs at home, as even experienced
adults get burnt using them!

>
> And I'd take the SQL standard over the CODASYL standard any time!
> --

Agreed!

> Mike Nolan