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

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-01-21 13:10:24 +0000, johnson.eric at gmail.com said:
> 
>> I would imagine that even Froble could concede that there was a time 
>> that he looked forward to new features added to his trusty DEC Basic 
>> toolset.
>> I would hope that familiarity with that excitement could enable one to 
>> understand why others might be drawn to the features of newer languages.
> 
> Or to the substantially updated and got-to-have-it versions of VMS, from 
> the ancient times.   Outside of the folks that want or need 
> Poulson-class servers, that's probably not V8.4-1H1.  Whether the x86-64 
> port or subsequent releases can add significant new features — beyond 
> the platform port — probably depends on how big VSI can get and 
> particularly on how much revenue they can realize from their initial VMS 
> and LP releases and/or support.
> 
> As for the future of BASIC, it'd be interesting to see what might happen 
> should VSI decide to overhaul DEC BASIC, adding object support, pointer 
> support,

Sometimes my perspective is rather narrow, and I don't always understand 
some concepts.  Wouldn't you consider the LOC() function to take care of 
the pointer question?  I at least have found it very useful.

> garbage collection and maybe some other new features into the 
> language.  This'd probably best follow the Visual Basic AS syntax for 
> pointers, given the VB syntax is long established.  This won't draw all 
> that many folks away from C, C++, Python or other higher-profile 
> languages.  But the crowd using VB was and probably still is bigger than 
> the crowd using VMS, l'd expect.
> 
> The flaws in DCL, however, remain.  It's clunky and confusing to use 
> with its asymmetric quoting and its fondness for quoted quotes for 
> various tasks, and that BASIC and Macro32 can solve various of these 
> limitations — sort of, as BASIC doesn't have a good way to chain 
> together a series of commands, short of spawning off DCL — won't draw 
> new folks to VMS.

Always room for improvement.

> Now as to whether VSI can get to profitability and can then start 
> seriously chasing what's available on other platforms, and can start 
> growing the user base?  That's no small and no simple project, either.

Well, that's the bottom line, huh?