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

[lists at openmailbox.org]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2015 21:11:15 -0400
Stephen Hoffman via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> > On Wednesday, 18 March 2015 01:22:16 UTC, johnso... at gmail.com  wrote:
> >> On Tuesday, March 17, 2015 at 1:00:04 PM UTC-4, li... at openmailbox.org
> >> wrote:

> > "separate your disgust at elements of the standard C library from that 
> > of the language itself. "
> > 
> > Lots of folk could benefit from doing that.

I don't agree. Most languages in popular use *are* their libraries. The
distinction is only relevant from an implementation or language lawyer
standpoint. All those languages would be worthless without their libraries
and as far as the coder knows the language and libraries are one. In most
regards the distinction is misleading and false.

To clear up the possibly deliberate misinterpretation of anything I have
written on the topic, my objections to C have nothing to do with C's
libraries, its use of libraries, etc. I object to C on its own lack of
merit.

> Ayup, and what will lists think of OpenVMS, given that more than a 
> third of OpenVMS is written in C?   I'd be inclined to use something 
> else now, but there's no-trivial cost involved in shifting languages.  
> Adding another language to the existing collection of (mostly) C, 
> Macro32 compiler code, and Bliss — and a variety of other bits in 
> smaller quantities, including Ada — just isn't going to be at the top 
> of most lists.  Particularly given the current team generally knows C, 
> Macro32 and Bliss pretty well, too.

Well, a third is better than 99%. I'm not sure how much better it is but
it's certainly better. Don't worry about me, I can still get my good code
fix elsewhere whenever I need it.

I think VMS is unusual (now) in that it was written at the outset to work
on a single platform and then some apparently pretty brilliant people
ported it to Alpha and then even more brilliantly to Itanic. I don't know
if it was the same people or not but having looked at Itanic for 30 minutes
total I would guess that was a lot harder than the Alpha port.

Regardless of other qualities, it's inevitable C is going to be the
de-facto choice if you want something portable. It didn't have to be that
way but it turned out that way. I understand that. I'm sure that situation
will get a lot worse if they port to Intel given Intel assembly is even
worse than C in some regards and it's much harder to find Intel assembly
coders than it is generic C coders.

But I also think if the amount of C in OpenVMS and products that run on it 
increases significantly you're going to see new kinds of failure modes you
didn't see when there was less C and unfortunately it would seem the lack
of those failures until now was a major differentiator between VMS and
whatever. The more you try to be like Linux and run everywhere, the more
you're going to be like Linux and run everywhere.

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