[Info-vax] VMS - what is the current thinking amongst the user community

[Sector7]

On Mar 24, 4:25 pm, Malcolm Dunnett <noth... at spammers.are.scum> wrote:
> Jon.Po... at sector7.com wrote:
>
> > (a) Is your VMS system running mainly home grown application or
> > packaged
>
>     Mainly home-grown
>
> > (b) If homegrown - are there any specific VMS API/ Subsystems - that
> > make VMS irreplaceable (lock manager, clustering etc)
>
>    FMS, RMS, DCL
>
> > (d) Is there still the religious fervor associated with VMS?
>
>    Follow this group for a few days and see for yourself.
>
>   (after
>
> > having to duplicate the AST/QIO/Lock Manager mechanisms - I have even
> > a greater appreciation of VMS internals)
> > (e) What programming languages are popular ? (no one has asked for
> > BASIC or DIBOL for 2 or 3 years)
>
>     Our VMS apps are about 50% BASIC and 50% Pascal
>
> > (f) If VMS was going to be replaced - as VMS guys - what target would
> > you lean toward (AIX/HPUX/LINUX/Solaris x86)
>
>     Linux. Linux on Alpha or Itanium would be useful (so existing
> VMS hardware could be re-purposed)

BASIC is easy to migrate - we have what is effectively a BASIC
compiler for UNIX - it generates 'C' as when i was writing it back in
'87 - that seemed easier than writing back end code generators -
PASCAL can be a real pain the Bu** DEC extended the pascal language
(no big shock there) - we did a huge PASCAL to C migration in
Australia many years ago - the PASCAL to C code started off pretty -
but when (I think) VAR CHARS were encountered - it got seriously ugly
- and went from a nice PASCAL to C translator to one that needed the
concept of a VMS string descriptor to work. I'd do what i can to the
pascal to make it more generic - run it through the GNU PASCAL to C
converter -and see at what point the code starts looking maintainable
--- there seems to be in inverse square law in computer language
translators - "The maintainability of the emitted code is indirectly
proportional to the functionality of the emitted code"