I'm trying to put together a brief timeline of the evolution of the 4GL/ABL for a co-worker who is coming from outside the Progress community; in particular with respect to the evolution of code and object re-use / persistence.
One thing I can't remember though is when persistent procedures were first introduced - was that with v7 or v8? I'm leaning towards v8 (since they are heavily used in ADM1), but I may be wrong. But then I know a bunch of features like internal procedures, UDFs, handles, dynamic widgets etc. were introduced with v7.
I'm pretty sure SUPER procedures didn't arrive until v9.
I can only get online/electronic documentation as far back as 9.1D, and we no longer have any physical v8 manuals around here. As far as I'm aware we were never on v7 or earlier so wouldn't have those anyway.
There is this collection on OEHive: www.oehive.org/versionhistory
There is this collection on OEHive: www.oehive.org/versionhistory
So it looks like:
1994 7.3A PP
Late on in the v7 life cycle then, a year or so before 8.0. Still 2 years before I graduated university and 3 years before I encountered Progress (and was given a v6 tutorial manual and told to "get on with it"!)
Yes - 7 was big, lots of new features to handle GUI. We started on 7.3 (we looked at 4,5 and 6 but never did much with them because of lack of GUI and internal procedures and functions).
I think we had persistent procedures in 7.
I think functions in arrived 8 not 7 - I could be wrong.
FUNCTION is a keyword at least in V7.3C
[View:/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/26/Keywords.txt:320:240]
I attached the changes of Progress keyword list in 7.3B - 9.0B.
Mike! You beat me to it!