[Info-vax] Free Pascal for VMS ?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/9/2018 11:36 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-05-08 16:35:08 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:
>> On 5/8/2018 12:06 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> The underlying operating system bits and the development tools in 
>>> support of OO are likely as big an effort as would be the work on the 
>>> compilers.  If not larger.  Message-passing implementation work, 
>>> endemic Unicode support, modifications to the system calls to return 
>>> the the requested data, debugging tool updates and process dump 
>>> updates, all the design and documentation and testing work, more than 
>>> a little work optimizing of the results, etc.
>>
>> Lots of work.
>>
>> But I believe business applications could move to OO before all the OS 
>> interface is OOified.
> 
> In the case of C++ and Java (and a few other choices), they can move now.
> 
> It's a package deal, for any apps that are making system calls.  Mixing 
> procedural APIs as ugly as itemlists with OO gets old.  Quickly. It'll 
> inevitably involve various local and third-party wrappers around the 
> calls, with all that entails.

Most business applications today have very few system calls.

A large OO application with a few procedural style system calls
is not that bad.

>                                     Also for the updates to the vendor 
> development tools, which are very weak by current standards.  LSEDIT and 
> third-party IDE tools, and none of the tools are particularly integrated 
> with the debugger or related OpenVMS tools when last I checked.

Totally agree.

I somewhat wonder how much effort VSI should put in for development
tools or if they should just accept that future VMS code will often
be written on other platforms.

>>>   Which would probably mean focusing on languages interesting to new 
>>> folks and to the existing OpenVMS folks in the installed base that 
>>> are interested in moving forward and adapting and adopting, while 
>>> maintaining the existing environments and with an incremental 
>>> migration likely eventually occurring for those apps.
>>
>> It is not that difficult to identify languages with traction.

[I reordered stuff a little bit to give a better flow]

 > In general, yes, there are surveys and related.  TIOBE index et al.

Indexes based on search like TIOBE.

Indexes based on fora like SO tags.

Indexes based on job ads.

None are perfect but when looking at several the resulting impression
should be rather close to reality.

I have always put most trust in job ads as it shows actual business
need and is not impacted by what students learn.

 >                                                                    C,
 > Java, and C++, long-term.  SQL, Rust and Go are some of the more obvious
 > additions, aiming at applications somewhat lower and somewhat higher
 > respectively.  Server-side JavaScript, too.

Yes.

 >                                            Yes, SQL means putting a
 > SQL database in the base distro.  SQLite and PostgreSQL being the most
 > obvious choices, there.  Existing php, Perl, C, C++, Java (LTS or
 > bleeding-edge current, pick your poison) being more fully integrated and
 > brought and kept current, etc.

Yes.

> It's less easy to identify which languages are being used by OpenVMS 
> folks, and less easy to identify which of those to add or improve and 
> that might then be adopted by OpenVMS folks.  And the whole OpenVMS OO 
> (akin to Cocoa or the .NET framework) would be by definition new to 
> OpenVMS developers, and unfamiliar to many.   Who can keep doing classic 
> BASIC or Fortran or otherwise; that's entirely fine.

>                           But DEC BASIC isn't on that TIOBE index 
> and Fortran is far down that list, and I keep running into source code 
> written in those on OpenVMS.  Lua would be very handy for OpenVMS folks, 
> but few are interested.    TIOBE has Ada on a not-great long-term trend, 
> and has Pascal falling off the proverbial cliff.

The current VMS world is very different from the general world regarding
programming languages.

If VSI wanted they could also get some data:
* count c.o.v/I-V questions last 10 years
* count support calls at HP(E)
* count in jobs ads requiring VMS

If I were to make a guess then I would say:

First tier: C

Second tier: Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Basic

Third tier: C++, Ada, PL/I, Macro-32

(only counting traditional native compiled languages - so
excluding Java, PHP, Python etc.)

If I were asked 20 years ago to make a prediction, then I would have
expected C++ to grow wild. But I don't think it has happened - it is
very rare to see C++ questions.

Arne