REXX!!!1!

by Mr. Bad

1999-10-25 00:50:06

Laughable Technology

d00d!@ Rexx is the coolest thing ever! Write all your code in big REXX like you were a CONSULTANT at a BANK in 1988! Yay for REXX!

Man, I can't believe someone's still kicking poor old REXX around. REXX, the crazy computer lingo that won't die -- a deadly scripting language in the horrible tradition of DOS batch programs and JCL. Gar! It's REXX!

Back in the day, when OS/2 fanatics would get all uppity-puppity about how great OS/2 was, their SECOND most deadly comeback (after "You can format two diskettes at once! One in drive a:, and one in drive b:! Try THAT on a Mac/DOS/Windows/Whatever!!!") was that OS/2 had REXX. It was the ne plus ultra of PC-level scripting languages. It would stop a conversation cold.

I think the Amiga also had REXX, which, like, that's the kinda thing that Amiga folks still get all teary-eyed over. "I miss the Amiga! It had great VIDEO! and it had REXX!! Waaaaaah!"

Hey, so, can you still buy a computer with TWO floppy drives? I wonder. That'd be kind of cool to find one. It's kinda sad to think of all the computing manpower in the late 80s that went into making it possible to format two diskettes at once, and now nobody even HAS two floppies. Like, as if Project Apollo had been achieved, and then the moon fell out of the sky or something. Who cares! Why bother?

Oh, yeah, but anyhow: back to REXX. IBM has this great REXX site, chock full of links to other REXX sites and REXX programs. There were wack developer tools in the early 90s, like Watcom's VX-REXX, a VISUAL REXX. Of course, there's a link from this site. And IBM has, of course, a couple of crazy-ass updated versions of REXX, like for example Object-REXX (no shit!). The coolest one I can see is the new NetREXX, which compiles REXX to Java, which can be, in turn, compiled into Java bytecode for running in a browser.

Yay for REXX! REXX everywhere! REXX REXX REXX!

Check it out yourself

backdraft@pigdog.org