Programming Languages - Fun with Rexx?
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As a follow up to a previous discussion on fun vs discipline in computer languages and having gone through everyone's lists I noticed no-one mentioned Rexx. Rexx was an interpreted job control language developed by the terribly clever Mike Cowlishaw (of IBM UK) in 1984 to replace EXEC and EXEC-2 on the IBM VM operating system (one of the best mainframe O/Ses in my opinion). It was also adopted as the main macro language for the XEDIT editor on the same O/S. I wrote all kinds of extension to the base XEDIT using Rexx. It was great fun and you had to impose your own discipline otherwise it could quickly get away from you. Rexx grew into a full language and was ported to OS/2 on the PC and then to Windows. It has been extended to have classes and all kinds of things apparently, now called NetRexx. I haven't used it really since my VM days although I've read about the new features. Has anyone else used, or is using, this fun language in any form?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I used REXX extensively as a System Programmer in a VM/DOS/VSE/MVS shop back in the day. So easy to use compared to Assembler and PL/I. When I was promoted to manage the application programming staff I built a full project management application with it. The simple, natural syntax was really refreshing. Totally off topic, I also enjoyed hobby programming in Forth, especially the excellent books by Thom Hogan.
Heh, I loved Forth back in the day. I've written Forth systems for the z80 and for the 68000 processors (for industrial control systems). One was a subroutine threaded multitasking version used as an intermediate language. The development application on the PC would compile to Forth which would than be downloaded to the industrial controller where it would be compiled to machine code. Was definitely a fun project.
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As a follow up to a previous discussion on fun vs discipline in computer languages and having gone through everyone's lists I noticed no-one mentioned Rexx. Rexx was an interpreted job control language developed by the terribly clever Mike Cowlishaw (of IBM UK) in 1984 to replace EXEC and EXEC-2 on the IBM VM operating system (one of the best mainframe O/Ses in my opinion). It was also adopted as the main macro language for the XEDIT editor on the same O/S. I wrote all kinds of extension to the base XEDIT using Rexx. It was great fun and you had to impose your own discipline otherwise it could quickly get away from you. Rexx grew into a full language and was ported to OS/2 on the PC and then to Windows. It has been extended to have classes and all kinds of things apparently, now called NetRexx. I haven't used it really since my VM days although I've read about the new features. Has anyone else used, or is using, this fun language in any form?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I used it for a telecomms control and billing application I wrote on Amiga. If I remember correctly, I wrote the entire first version of the application in ARexx because the database we were using only had a ARexx API. I remember it having a GUI and everything. It even communicated with serial devices. I then rewrote most of the application in C++, as it needed a better GUI, and C++ made sense for that. The DB interfacing remained in ARexx so there were plenty of ARexx to maintain. A lot of the business logic existed in ARexx.
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As a follow up to a previous discussion on fun vs discipline in computer languages and having gone through everyone's lists I noticed no-one mentioned Rexx. Rexx was an interpreted job control language developed by the terribly clever Mike Cowlishaw (of IBM UK) in 1984 to replace EXEC and EXEC-2 on the IBM VM operating system (one of the best mainframe O/Ses in my opinion). It was also adopted as the main macro language for the XEDIT editor on the same O/S. I wrote all kinds of extension to the base XEDIT using Rexx. It was great fun and you had to impose your own discipline otherwise it could quickly get away from you. Rexx grew into a full language and was ported to OS/2 on the PC and then to Windows. It has been extended to have classes and all kinds of things apparently, now called NetRexx. I haven't used it really since my VM days although I've read about the new features. Has anyone else used, or is using, this fun language in any form?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Back in my mainframe days, I wrote some ISPF editor add-ins using REXX.
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As a follow up to a previous discussion on fun vs discipline in computer languages and having gone through everyone's lists I noticed no-one mentioned Rexx. Rexx was an interpreted job control language developed by the terribly clever Mike Cowlishaw (of IBM UK) in 1984 to replace EXEC and EXEC-2 on the IBM VM operating system (one of the best mainframe O/Ses in my opinion). It was also adopted as the main macro language for the XEDIT editor on the same O/S. I wrote all kinds of extension to the base XEDIT using Rexx. It was great fun and you had to impose your own discipline otherwise it could quickly get away from you. Rexx grew into a full language and was ported to OS/2 on the PC and then to Windows. It has been extended to have classes and all kinds of things apparently, now called NetRexx. I haven't used it really since my VM days although I've read about the new features. Has anyone else used, or is using, this fun language in any form?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
-
As a follow up to a previous discussion on fun vs discipline in computer languages and having gone through everyone's lists I noticed no-one mentioned Rexx. Rexx was an interpreted job control language developed by the terribly clever Mike Cowlishaw (of IBM UK) in 1984 to replace EXEC and EXEC-2 on the IBM VM operating system (one of the best mainframe O/Ses in my opinion). It was also adopted as the main macro language for the XEDIT editor on the same O/S. I wrote all kinds of extension to the base XEDIT using Rexx. It was great fun and you had to impose your own discipline otherwise it could quickly get away from you. Rexx grew into a full language and was ported to OS/2 on the PC and then to Windows. It has been extended to have classes and all kinds of things apparently, now called NetRexx. I haven't used it really since my VM days although I've read about the new features. Has anyone else used, or is using, this fun language in any form?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
What do you mean? REXX *was*? It still is, although rarely seen outside IBM nowadays. There are free interpreters available for Windows and Linux. Even though REXX is still around, I will admit it is now on the wane, as Python can do everything REXX can do, and so much more, and Python code can be incredibly compact. I used it most back in my days at IBM (1984-1993), and sporadically since then. It is a language well suited to mainframe scripting, and its integration into XEDIT and LEXX (remember that editor, anyone?) on VM made these editors the most powerful I have ever used to this day. REXX transformed mainframe scripting, but it is of its time, and that time has passed for most of us. Still, it is a great language to work with, and I will always have feelings of affection for it.
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On the Amiga computers, you could use a version of Rexx called Arexx: ARexx - Wikipedia[^]
Around 1992 or so, back when my ANSI-escape-sequence-Fu was strong, I was co-owner of a BBS running on an Amiga 2000. When we added a 2nd phone line, I wrote a 3-way chat extension in (A)Rexx (SysOp and 2 users). I still feel that Rexx is the most comfortable (for lack of a better word) of scripting/interpreted languages. After the internet pretty much made BBSs a thing of the past, I wrote a USENET client in Arexx. Rexx is just fun. PowerShell scripting would be really awesome if they could be written in Rexx. 😃
Eagles my fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
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I had some fun with Rexx in the early to mid 90's on OS/2. It was ahead of it's time. Enjoyed it far more than batch programming. I also used a GUI tookit called VX-Rexx to create GUI programs with Rexx on OS/2. Good times.
- lviolette
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I loved VX-Rexx.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
-
As a follow up to a previous discussion on fun vs discipline in computer languages and having gone through everyone's lists I noticed no-one mentioned Rexx. Rexx was an interpreted job control language developed by the terribly clever Mike Cowlishaw (of IBM UK) in 1984 to replace EXEC and EXEC-2 on the IBM VM operating system (one of the best mainframe O/Ses in my opinion). It was also adopted as the main macro language for the XEDIT editor on the same O/S. I wrote all kinds of extension to the base XEDIT using Rexx. It was great fun and you had to impose your own discipline otherwise it could quickly get away from you. Rexx grew into a full language and was ported to OS/2 on the PC and then to Windows. It has been extended to have classes and all kinds of things apparently, now called NetRexx. I haven't used it really since my VM days although I've read about the new features. Has anyone else used, or is using, this fun language in any form?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I wrote numerous programs and XEdit macros in Rexx back in the mid-80s. Originally, my scripts were in Exec-2 in VM/CMS on an IBM System 370, but when we got access to REXX, I rewrote them all. I recall EXECIO as being particularly fiddly. Cheers, Russ
My first exposure to Rexx was when I had to convert a couple of hundred EXEC and Exec-2 scripts to Rexx under VM/CMS. I learnt XEDIT used Rexx as a macro language so I wrote a Rexx program to do 99% of the conversions for me. I originally had three months to complete the project doing 2 or 3 conversions a day. I did that for the first 5 or 6, then spent two weeks doing nothing but writing and perfecting the XEDIT macro in Rexx. My boss was getting worried that I had still only done about 10 after three weeks! Then I did the rest in 2 days using the macros. Another week fixing the issues and I was done. I loved Rexx (and XEDIT), EXECIO not so much ;-).
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.