[Info-vax] DCL's flaws (both scripting and UI)

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-01-18 21:19:35 +0000, Simon Clubley said:
> 
>> I think it's time once again to build a list of DCL's flaws now that
>> VSI are around. Don't forget however that DCL is both a scripting
>> language and a UI. My initial list is below.
>>
>> Some of DCL's UI flaws:

I guess I'm just in a particular mood tonight.  Live with it.

:-)

> There's no...
> 
> UTF-8

Should be a VMS data type, or types
Definitely a needful thing

> asynchronous processing

Use Basic and ASTs

> floating point

Basic has it

> unsigned integers

Basic SHOULD have this

> 64-bit integers

Basic has it

> binary data

Basic has it

> objects

Can you be specific, don't really understand

> dictionaries

Can you be specific, don't really understand

> arrays

Basic has it

> functions that return values

Basic has it

> user-written lexical functions

Basic has it

> support for menu-based and graphical-based user interfaces

Hmmmmm ........  I've got a menu application ...

> JIT

Basic has it

> compilation

Basic has it

> embedding

Can you be specific, don't really understand

> debugging

Basic has it

> DCL libraries

Basic has object and run time libraries

> More specific error trapping than ON; let me catch specific errors.

Basic has it

> 
> etc...
> 
> Simon's command completion and command editing and command history, 
> certainly.
> 
> Then there are parts of DCL which are seldom understood or easily 
> misunderstood
> scoping
> quoting and double-quoting and the two-phase substitution processing
> f$getqui
> 
> 

Are we having fun yet?