With all these mainframe shenanigans I've been into lately, I thought I'd take another look at REXX, a mainframe scripting language, popular on IBM. I used REXX in a IBM VM a hundred years ago. And very recently very briefy under TSO, in the MTM course. An implementation available on Linux that I tried is called the Regina Rexx Interpreter. I easily installed it from a tar, only two commands, because I incorrectly assumed it wouldn't be offered for Manjaro. It was available in Pamac.
There is a nice Rexx Programmers Reference PDF available. Although their selling methods could use some work...
"Of all the free scripting languages, why should you use REXX? REXX is unique in that it provides power with ease of use ." Yes, both power with ease of use , is unique and very hard to find. Hardly any language attempts to do both. For example, that little known Python, despite Guido van Rossum's best efforts it remains, as everyone knows...weak and hard to use! It is ridiculed and scorned...the world over!
Personally I might have refrained from comparing it to "all the free scripting languages". I might have said something like...it's a nice scripting language and if you come from a IBM mainframe background with REXX experience, you can leverage that knowledge, on another platform.
Don't get me wrong REXX is a nice option on mainframes. But would I really choose it over Python, most anywhere else? Well maybe for basic file handling if I was a IBM mainframer that used it frequently at work.