[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-01-31 19:20:10 +0000, seasoned_geek said:

> On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:06:34 AM UTC-6, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> 
>> Nobody's mentioned an IDE here yet, and that's basically a requirement> 
>> for most modern developers.   That means more than a little work in> 
>> LSEDIT or other VSI tools, and more than a little integration support> 
>> that the third-party IDE providers can build on.   Build-related 
>> tools,> too.  Cmake has been ported, but is not yet available.  Work on 
>> GNV and> its tools.  Etc.  Existing ISVs accept where OpenVMS and its 
>> tools are,> but potential new ISVs are going to be a little more 
>> particular about> the available tools and frameworks.
>> 
> 
> Yes and no. The bulk of the applications written and running on OpenVMS 
> couldn't really be debugged in an IDE.  I say that because they are not 
> single instance things like the embedded systems I write with Qt. (Btw, 
> if x86 VMS is going to support graphics, it needs a port of Qt because 
> that is used everywhere. Linux, embedded systems, idiot phones, the 
> list goes on and on.) Back when we had a single program running in a 
> batch script you could adequately debug, but many of those days are 
> gone. Now you are debugging ACMS task servers which can be killed off 
> by the controller if you dawdle looking at things too long.
> As far as just a GUI editor with syntax highlighting UltraEdit needs 
> only a bit of fixing. They don't correctly handle file versioning. I 
> suspect many of the other higher end editors have the same issue. If it 
> retrieves some_prog.c;9 when you save it via the FTP interface it 
> replaces some_prog.c;9 instead of creating version 10.
> 
> Morphing LSE into an IDE or cross compiling an existing IDE/high end 
> editor, would require a full graphics framework so color syntax 
> highlighting could occur. I have not heard that a full graphics 
> framework would be supported, unless they planned on porting 
> DECWindows. It would be wonderful if they ported KDE, but that would be 
> a __massive__ undertaking.

This isn't about absolutely every app and every corner case, it's a 
more general expectation of developers on other platforms.
As for systems tossing around messages, those inherently involve 
different and in-built tools to debug, or debugger plug-ins where those 
are available.
As for graphics-capable IDEs, those work well on certain other platforms.
As for file versions, vanishingly few folks uses those outside of 
OpenVMS, and file versions don't work all that well on OpenVMS, and 
source control using file versions as implemented on OpenVMS are a 
trouble flag.
VSI has stated OpenVMS is server-only, so — if they hold to that — 
there's little likelihood of client-side graphics tools nor of 
substantial upgrades to X11.


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