[Info-vax] Learning VMS application programming

[Simon Clubley]

On 2014-09-07, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
> On 2014-09-06, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2014-09-06 20:20:33 +0000, wendellxe at yahoo.com said:
>>
>>> I never saw Fortran used for systems programming before.
>>
>> Fortran is not used for system programming on VMS.   It's an 
>> application-programming language.
>>
>> C, Bliss and Macro32 assembler are most commonly used for system-level 
>> programming on VMS.
>
> Since I just stated in another post that Fortan was the first HLL language
> available for VAX/VMS, was Bliss available to the public before it
> appeared on the Freeware CDs?
>
> In my experience Fortran was used for system programming in customer land
> before C came along, though the tendency was just to head straight for
> Macro for many projects.
>

The use of Fortran for systems programming was a common concept at
the time and not restricted to DEC sites. In the early 1980s, in my
secondary school/6th form days, I wrote a system monitor (which ran
as a user process, not a kernel module) for the local miniframe in
Fortran and didn't even think twice about the language choice.

I can't remember if I dropped into assembly to do some specific
things or just did some system calls, but the vast majority of the
code was written in Fortran.

Fortran was used as a general purpose language in those days in the
same way as C is now used.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world