[Info-vax] Development Tooling (was: Re: Opportunity for VSI?)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-15 09:45:26 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> ...Many people do...✂️...namely people who write their own 
> applications.  They need an OS and  a compiler, that's it...

That's true, as far as it goes.  Developers can work with an operating 
system and just a compiler.  Though developers are a fickle lot.

With the expectations of frameworks and tool chains, and around one or 
more IDEs and increasingly on the scale of Xcode or JetBrains or VS 
capabilities, and with expectations around app instrumentation and 
build tools and deployment tools, and around security-related 
frameworks and encryption, and a variety of other details well beyond 
the compilers, these requirements developers increasing have can make 
OpenVMS a difficult sale.

This among the subset of folks that are purchasing new servers for new 
bespoke deployments.

And these folks often purchase new based on what servers they already have.

And that's before any consideration of the work that VSI has underway 
to bring various of the compilers forward to something approaching 
compliance with current standards.

Developer expectations have moved on from what OpenVMS offers.  The 
classic OpenVMS edit-compile-link-debug development cycle isn't all 
that popular, these days.

LSEDIT was a good IDE choice in the 1990s, but it's utterly 
uncompetitive in recent years.

I find that running the entirety of the edit-compile-link-debug loop 
entirely within the same editor session preferable.  I can change code 
or examine variables or set breakpoints, and where my syntax errors are 
shown as I'm entering the source code, and where editor completion is 
predictive approaching prescient.  Having to switch between 
tooling—even with COMPILE/REVIEW within LSEDIT—is more work, for weaker 
results, and it's slower.

For existing OpenVMS users and organizations, OpenVMS will continue to 
be interesting and useful.

But what OpenVMS requires and what it presently offers is not and will 
not soon be interesting to other folks.  VSI is now working to address 
the immediate needs of the installed base, and—as the production x86-64 
release becomes available and the core developing tooling stabilize 
closer to what's considered current—VSI will shift toward addressing 
more of the omissions and limitations, and to enable their partners to 
provide development tooling that VSI does not.

There are pricing and licensing considerations lurking here, too.  At 
least basic development tooling is free on most current, competitive 
operating system platforms, and sometimes much more advanced 
development tooling.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC