A recent forum question asked if it were possible to concatenate all of the fields of a file without having to type them all in. In that particular case the fields were fixed length and the same type so our compiler writer was able to advise the use of a type transfer – simple, slick and efficient.

There is a movement that says there should be one, and only one, way to perform any given task. This concept, famously championed by Python, has some merit. It allows for simple and easily understandable language syntax and it tends to mean that short stretches of code have an obvious semantic.

When people first see ECL they usually spot a few programming languages lurking in the syntax: Prolog for the declarative definitions, Pascal for ‘:=’ and the modular syntax, C for the math expressions and SQL for the independence between logical and physical data mapping. Most people miss the language that drives two of ECLs more interesting features: SNOBOL4.

I well remember my introduction to big data. We were at a customer site and they were taking us on a tour of their facility when we walked into the ‘sneakernet’. The sneakernet was a wonder to behold. Along the far wall was a gigantic diagram that was the dataflow of their enterprise. Between us and the wall was an array of forty cubes, much like many enterprise offices: until you noticed the Post-It Notes.