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

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-01-19 22:53:11 +0000, John Reagan said:
> 
>> I'd rather not mung up DCL with aggregate returns (don't call them 
>> objects please) but rather say you should use Perl or Python for such 
>> larger tasks.
> 
> Which gets back to looking at how to provide an alternative or a more 
> modern scripting language than what DCL provides.
> 
> So get Perl, Python or Lua into the base distro, and with a decent set 
> of libraries, and — like what is offered for DCL — allow an easy path 
> for direct invocation.

Which doesn't seem to be a problem, from what I can see.

Actually, if Python ran with DCL still being the CLI, it should not be a 
problem.  If you wanted Python as the CLI, that might be some work.  Nor 
do I have any clue what kind or how much work.  Nor any clue as to any 
benefits.

> With embedding and scripting, where those languages support it, too.
> 
> For better or worse, DCL and Macro32 are the common programming choices, 
> having the benefit of being installed everywhere.
> 
> 

Isn't that a business decision?

Selected languages could be bundled in with the base VMS distribution.