[Info-vax] portable sequential file formats (was: Re: Couple of questions on VMS -> world)

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-03-19 05:44:49 +0000, David Froble said:
> 
>> So, what's wrong with using Bliss?  It's there.  It works.  It was 
>> designed for this kind of stuff.
> 
> Bliss is not a language that most folks have used or even know about, 
> and is not particularly available on platforms beyond DEC-related and 
> not commonly used on those, and Bliss suffers from some of the same 
> issues as C around memory management, pointers (keep removing dots until 
> the dereference crashes and then add one dot back, etc) and memory 
> management and/or garbage collection support.  Bliss has a massively 
> better preprocessor and macro capabilities than does C, though the value 
> of an improved preprocessor might be the subject of some debate with 
> certain folks.
> 
>> I won't say MACRO-32, since I have to beat myself with an ugly stick 
>> to look at some of my old code.  That's not something you do as a 
>> hobby. Either lots of it, or none of it.
> 
> Macro32 does very well, particularly with the eponymous macros support, 
> that for better and for worse.  As for garbage collection and memory 
> management and the rest, most of the Macro32 is issues are similar to C.
> 
> Macro32 and C both require far more glue code than I'd prefer.
> 
> Rust language is more interesting (to me), though that compiler is 
> probably far too new for many folks to use.  Then there's that the 
> availability of Rust isn't widespread.  (Yet?)  And Rust is not yet 
> available on VMS AFAIK.
> 
> 

Bliss is available on VMS, and I'd guess that most people at VSI have 
some knowledge about it.

If there is no language that does things as well as desired, perhaps 
Bliss is the language that VSI can modify to solve the perceived or real 
deficiencies.

Or, re-engineer Basic for the purpose and then use a simple easy to 
understand language ....

:-)