> PL/1 would have been a disaster, assuming it could run at all on a 16-bit machine.
There was a PL/1 compiler of sorts that IBM flogged on MS-/PC-DOS in the early days of the IBM PC. IBM didn't write it and only distributed it IIRC, but I can't recall if the one I used was written by Digital Research or Language Processors, Inc. (LPI). It was riddled with compromises and indeed, slow as death compiling. That's saying something when I was used to fiddling with paper tape and audio cassette by then; floppy disks were considered lightning fast by comparison, and the compiler bogged down that experience. So. Many. Floppy. Swaps.
It was sold under the value proposition that your mainframe programmers could prototype small bits of code on their PC's (even from home!!!), then when satisfied with the results they'd upload the polished source to the mainframe. I shudder to imagine what it took to make that USP a reality for real production code snippets.
Perhaps you're thinking of PL/M [0]? I had a brief encounter with it (as sold by Intel) targeting (of all amazing things) the 8051 microcontroller ISA.
And yes: So. Many. Floppy. Swaps. The codegen was not horrendous, but IIRC its price kept it well out of reach of non-commercial users.
There was a PL/1 compiler of sorts that IBM flogged on MS-/PC-DOS in the early days of the IBM PC. IBM didn't write it and only distributed it IIRC, but I can't recall if the one I used was written by Digital Research or Language Processors, Inc. (LPI). It was riddled with compromises and indeed, slow as death compiling. That's saying something when I was used to fiddling with paper tape and audio cassette by then; floppy disks were considered lightning fast by comparison, and the compiler bogged down that experience. So. Many. Floppy. Swaps.
It was sold under the value proposition that your mainframe programmers could prototype small bits of code on their PC's (even from home!!!), then when satisfied with the results they'd upload the polished source to the mainframe. I shudder to imagine what it took to make that USP a reality for real production code snippets.