[Info-vax] Evolve, or... (was: Re: 64 bit DCL ?)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-01-18 22:03:06 +0000, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk said:

> On VMS, DCL grew, maybe because users wanted it to. It grew so much
> that at least one commercially available book exists on the subject
> of Writing Real Programs in DCL.

There's a DCL book?

> Times appear to have changed.

Yeah, the second edition of the DCL book has been out of print for a 
number of years.

> Python's got a lot of neat features. Plus some horrible misfeatures
> which are now fundamental to the language. Sensitivity to whitespace
> is A Bad Idea, and the deliberate incompatibilities between Python 2
> and Python 3 don't seem that clever to me either.

Python isn't the only choice; as happened with Microsoft and PowerShell 
and DEC and DCL, new approaches are possible.

> In five years time, school leavers will stand a fair chance of being
> as fluent in Python as they are in English, if Raspberry Pi succeeds.

MIT moved their intro computers course over to Python a while back.

> All that said, a proper VMS implementation of Python (2 and/or 3?) 
> wouldsurely go a long way?

Having an integrated scripting language would be beneficial, whether 
Python or Lua or something else license-appropriate for inclusion, yes.



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