[Info-vax] Building for Customers, Revenue

[Shark8]

On 9/14/2014 1:27 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>
> In the past, this was quite easy because of the great documentation and
> system services/RTL that worked exactly as advertised compare to the
> ever changing deveopper landscape given by Microsoft.

I think VMS /may/ still have an edge with its Common Language 
Environment (compared with MS Dotnet's CLR) as the former is all native 
code... of course that means that porting the CLE is a bit more work 
than the CLR [which only needs to be concerned about the Dotnet VM].

{That is, the "which is better" really boils down to where the work is 
done.}


> However, lack of modern IDE and lack of modern tools have eroded this
> former advantage.

Given some of VMS's strengths {like the transparent DB-access, and 
structured files} it should be easier to write some truly superior tools 
-- indeed, I would argue that to be truly attractive to developers we 
would want to "one up" the quality of the tools: revive the idea of the 
APSE[1] and extend it to general-purpose [instead of language-specific] 
programing.

We would want a DB to store attributed-trees (essentially ASTs w/ added 
[semantic] information) in general, but specialized for the language[s] 
being used {doable programmatically with grammars and generators}. -- 
This system should also incorporate:
(a) versioning -- doable and with an "atomic update" strategy, where no 
update leaves the DB in an inconsistent [non-compilable] state, we could 
reap the benefits of continuous integration immediately.
(b) Team Management -- Admin-style stuff.
(c) Project Management -- Parametrization of the project, dependency 
management, project "nesting" etc.
(d) Common Backend -- Such a setup would lend itself to having a common 
code generator, much like [IIUC] the GEM compilers.
(e) IDE -- Syntax highlighting and refactoring could be "regex-proof" 
[I've seen several IDEs choke on syntax highlighting because they were 
using something similar regex on the text; this won't happen if the code 
{the enhanced-AST} is already semantically meaningful]; I've also seen 
'RENAME' implemented as a text "search and replace".
(f) Theory Prover -- The ability to prove the properties of your 
software is a /big/ plus, especially where security or safety are concerned.
(g) DSA Management -- Distributed System Application; this would be a 
killer feature: the ability to define (and possibly cross-compile for) 
interfaces to other systems/devices. Imagine being able to produce a 
program that controls special hardware, does the correct/needed 
processing, and has management SW for a small device like a cellphone... 
all fully native to their respective processors. {e.g. a manufacturing 
plant's robotic controls, linked to the order/sales system, and 
manageable/administrated from the foreman's cellphone.}[2]


[1] - APSE: Ada Programming Support Environment -- a highly specialized 
environment for Ada programming that included things like IDE, 
versioning, and "library management" (analogous to projects and 
environments in general-programming speak).
[2] - Some people are relegating this sort of setup to a web-server 
style interface (which is why they want modern browsers) -- personally I 
disagree with them, you shouldn't /have/ to deal with such a setup and 
opening your system to possible attacks in order to enable remote 
administration/management. It might be nice to do on a browser, at 
times, but there's also good reasons you might not /want/ all the 
baggage that comes that way [like browsers and JS].