A quick interview with Rexx creator Mike Cowlishaw

As for what I would change in Rexx: there are some limitations due to the slowness of computer systems at the moment (e.g., I needed all comparisons to be, by default, caseless). Many of those kinds of issues I mounted in NetRexx (see).

Hassam: Rexx has been battle examined at IBM and has given beginning to many implementations. To what do you attribute the early success of Rexx?

Dr Cowlishaw It was (and nonetheless is) very simple for individuals who weren’t programmers to study and to get outcomes with Rexx, due it it having few specials codes and so forth (the one which triggered most bother was ‘*’ that means ‘multiply’. That was (and is) fully non-intuitive to somebody seeing a Rexx program for the primary time.

Hassam: do you expect the following paradigm shift in programming languages will likely be?

Dr Cowlishaw: Hopefully a a lot higher-level interface, the place the programmer describes what’s needed after which refines it with the assistance of (maybe) some actual AI.