[Info-vax] 64 bit DCL ?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-01-18 14:50:13 +0000,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG said:

> Fuck that.  If you want Linux, get linux.

Running Unix is easier in many ways, as that's where the more powerful 
tools are.   That's also what VMS is competing with.

> Python?  Gack!  Unnecessary Ubersuperbloatwarez for the task(s) that 
> DCL should be used to solve.
> 
> DCL is perfect for what it does and what it should be used for.  Trying 
> to write programs, any programs, that would be better served by writing 
> them in any compiled language using DCL is, IMNSHO, stupid.  Besides, 
> you can't execute a command in Python such as "$ SHOW PROCESS" without 
> going through hurdles because that command (or any for that matter) is 
> issued via a sub-process.

If DCL is forever going to be the answer, then I don't want to know the 
question.

There is a whole lot that DCL is just not very good at, whether it's 
the perpetual confusion around how many single and double-quotes and 
ampersands are needed that confuse new users and trip experienced 
users, on up to the problems with binary data, as well as its inability 
to deal with UTF-8 and objects and a number of more recent constructs.  
DCL has not advanced significantly from its days as a replacement for 
MCR, and it really shows.

Then there's that DCL has historically allowed some rather questionable 
code to more or less work, and that can complicate run-time error 
detection, the ability to maintain application compatibility, and 
upward-compatible changes.  It's just not tightly specified, and if 
those errors were clamped down — DCL will execute certain commented-out 
code, and how that ability had to be re-added when it was "erroneously" 
fixed? — would cause some of the existing procedures to break.

Look at that debugger you wrote for DCL, and then ask yourself whether 
that was something that most folks would have already expected to be 
available.  Look around at the various requires for DCL speed-ups, 
either via JIT or compilation, too.  DCL is bad at debugging and 
compilation because the design never had those in mind.  Look at 
whether it'd be handy to be able to compile in DCL, too — chugging 
along in whatever language, and then be able to invoke a DCL subroutine 
to go do something, and not have to deal with the care and feeding of a 
subprocess.





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