[Info-vax] [OT] Programming languages on Unix, was: Re: [OT] Unix terminal drivers

[Nomen Nescio]

Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:

> Bernard Giroud wrote 2012-05-21 17:21:
> > Le 21/05/2012 17:05, Dirk Munk a écrit :
> >> Simon Clubley wrote:
> >>> On 2012-05-21, Paul Sture<paul at sture.ch> wrote:
> >>>> On Sun, 20 May 2012 23:51:17 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> On 2012-05-20, David Froble<davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Don't know much (anything) about Unix, but with the tools on VMS some
> >>>>>> very capable input functions can be implemented. What's important to
> >>>>>> me is, on VMS I don't have to use "C".

How's VMS PL/I? PL/I is a very nice all around language choice.

> >>>>>
> >>>>> Strangely enough, I'm not forced to use C on Unix either. :-)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> My day-to-day languages on Unix include C, Ada, Python, PHP (work only;
> >>>>> you won't catch me using it at home), and bash for shell scripting.
> >>>>
> >>>> I came across this rant about PHP over the weekend.
> >>>>
> >>>> "PHP: a fractal of bad design"
> >>>>
> >>>> http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
> >>>>
> >>>>> Other languages I have used or have considered using on Unix over the
> >>>>> years include Fortran, Java, COBOL, Pascal, Modula-2 and C++.
> >>>>
> >>>> I was looking for a Unix COBOL a few years ago, but came up with a
> >>>> blank,
> >>>> though I will admit I was looking at free/cheap solutions.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> The two I know about are:
> >>>
> >>> OpenCOBOL at http://www.opencobol.org/

There are (at least) two commercial solutions as well.

> Who is the target for this kind of tool?

Looks to be a vicious circle of rehosting. First they got you to rehost your
"legacy" COBOL on SPARC or OpenVMS then they get you to rehost it on
x86. What's next, iPhone? Swatch?

> A major company looking at porting their bet-their-business
> COBOL applications from OpenVMS to Linux ?

Some companies do have all their business in COBOL. Actually more than you
would like to believe.

> Or is it just for happy-hackers that couldn't care less
> if the tool suddenly dies?

I think that is the case with the open source projects. The commercial
solutions are actually quite old. The Microfocus project started out ages
ago with Realia. I don't know what Alchemy/Fujitsu started out with.

> >>> far better off with the Free Pascal port. It's been many years since I
> >>> last used either of them however, so my knowledge about them is not
> >>> current.

FreePascal is an interesting project, self hosting and runs on many
platforms. I haven't used it either but from a quick glance it looks quite
serious even doing its own code generation and not relying on gcc for
anything, not even the runtime.