[Info-vax] Modern software development for VMS, was: Re: source control and semantics (Re: Why so much Unix envy?)

[Shark8]

On 9/16/2014 2:15 PM, David Froble wrote:
> Shark8 wrote:
>> On 9/14/2014 9:40 AM, David Froble wrote:
>>> What's wrong with directories containing source files, build files, and
>>> such?
>>
>> The reason that directories/source-files is bad is because it makes
>> things like compiling/linking dependent on path-searching; it also
>> makes things a bit more difficult for dependency-management and
>> encourages inefficient practices/procedures (i.e. recursive make).
>
> How so?  I have no problems.  I can show examples.

Try getting into cygwin and using "funny" [non-standard] directory 
layouts, especially when there's multiple systems [ie cross-compiling] 
involved along with the native.

>
>> The problem with text is essentially the same problem as "a string"
>> vs. "an identifier" (the identifier has rules it must follow, like in
>> Ada, for example: a string containing only alphanumeric-characters or
>> underscore, with the following restrictions: it cannot start with a
>> digit or underscore, cannot end with an underscore, and cannot contain
>> successive underscores). -- Now if you have an identifier-type that
>> you have as a key to a map to a record indicating type-value-location
>> you have a Symbol-table (with the nice property that all the symbols
>> are valid identifiers).
>>
>> Or, a bit more on the mundane side, consider DB-applications and
>> ensuring [DB] consistency and proper-processing; you could use the
>> following to ensure that (a) all SSNs are correctly and consistently
>> formatted, (b) that the parameters and return-values conform to those
>> rules, and (c) that when [not if] one of the developers/maintainers
>> inserts bad data into the DB it will be caught:
>>
>> [SNIP CODE EXAMPLES]
>
> None of the above seems (to me) to have anything to do with the storage,
> modifying, compiling, and linking of programs.

That's because you weren't thinking in the abstract, the principles 
shown, but focusing on the examples themselves which were examples of "a 
bit more on the mundane side" nature.

>
>> IOW, to store programs as text is to ignore that there are constraints
>> as to the validity thereof.
>
> As far as I know, programs ARE text.  I know of nothing else.

They certainly don't HAVE to be.
Here's one way to store an Ada program as a data-structure rather than 
text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIANA_%28intermediate_language%29