[Info-vax] DCL Integer Overflow

[GerMarsh]

On Friday, July 7, 2017 at 1:21:18 AM UTC+1, mcle... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, July 6, 2017 at 6:01:08 PM UTC+10, erga... at gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, 6 July 2017 01:44:43 UTC+1, Robert A. Brooks  wrote:
> > 
> > > > Yes, folks do write real programs in DCL.
> > > 
> > > https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Real-Programs-Second-Technologies/dp/1555581919
> > 
> > You can't believe everything you read ;)
> 
> I once wrote some software with over 100,000 lines of DCL when i was on a contract job.  It was a management tool for a software library.  The client didn't want to pay for a compiler on the machine as well as the ongoing costs for the compiler and someone with the skills in the language to handle maintenance.  Speed wasn't a critical issue.
> Indexed files and screen handling all worked fine.  Client was happy.
> A colleague left as the department was downsized so I took over his 70,000 line DCL software too.
> It was all do-able in DCL and after all, DCL comes free with VS.

A long time ago in a company long since gone, we noticed excessive supervisor mode CPU usage over many days. Once we nailed the culprit we found out he was a rather enterprising software engineer who wrote a cross compiler all in DCL.

He was persuaded to write it in something more efficient. But fair play, the constraints of the language did not get in his way!