[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-01-31 12:28:53 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2013-01-31, Simon Clubley 
> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>> On 2013-01-30, Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> On 1/30/2013 2:56 PM, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
>>>>>>>> [1] Does anybody have a suggestion for a collective noun
>>>>>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collective_nouns_for_birds> for
>>>>>>>> DCL procedures?  A collection of DCL procedures?  A nest?  Wad?
>>>>>>>> Accretion?  Scrum?  Heap?
>>>> 
>>>> A FISTful of procedures?
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Assuming that this is serious, what about a "Library"
>> 
>> No. A library is where you put things that are designed to be readable.
>> 
> 
> I suppose I'd better explain that comment. :-)

I understood the joke.

> I try to write my DCL procedures to be as readable and as maintainable as
> possible, but when I use other scripting languages on Linux and then come
> back to DCL, it feels rather like trying to write using assembly language
> when writing DCL code.
> 
> The end result is the DCL procedure is cluttered with various workarounds
> and low level coding structures needed to handle the limits of DCL.

The OpenVMS command line, system services, the language and run-time 
libraries and the rest are similarly limited.  Solid, but limited.

While it's possible to do a whole lot with VMS — "Turing Complete" and 
all — it's increasingly involving far more work and far more time and 
far more effort.  Adding all this code means there's more to go wrong, 
too; when you need a few hundred or a few thousand lines of glue code 
and a {collective noun} of DCL procedures, you're adding bugs and costs.

In terms of raw command line features and capabilities, bash completely 
blows the sneakers off of DCL.  It's possible to do a whole lot more in 
bash, and often in a whole lot less space.  Not that there aren't 
gnarly parts of bash, not to imply bash is the paragon of clear syntax, 
and not to imply bash makes a good newsreader.  (Though it would not 
surprise me to learn somebody's written a newsreader in bash, either.)

Put another way, when working in DCL, I find myself missing various 
capabilities of bash.  Yes, you can get there.  But as Simon writes, 
the DCL code is more cluttered and more convoluted.  Which is just a 
little weird, given how convoluted and cluttered bash can and often 
does look.  I find myself climbing into gnv for various tasks, too.



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