[Info-vax] Free Pascal for VMS ?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/10/2018 11:54 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-05-10 00:11:59 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:
> 
>> 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
> 
> That's all where we were.  Where we are can't be changed.  Where we want 
> to be?  That can be changed.

It has to change. But understanding the starting point can
be relevant.

>> If I were to make a guess then I would say:
>>
>> First tier: C
> 
> Also given that an ever-increasing part of OpenVMS itself is written in C.
> 
>> Second tier: Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Basic
> 
> Reasonable and unsurprising list.
> 
>> Third tier: C++, Ada, PL/I, Macro-32
> 
> Support for clang gets both C and C++, Ada is third-party, PL/I is no 
> longer offered and AFAIK didn't get ported, and Macro32 is a sizable 
> hunk of OpenVMS.  There's a decent-sized hunk of Ada in the operating 
> system.  And the APIs for that part of OpenVMS do need some work around 
> complexity and fitness for common uses, but I digress.  I don't recall 
> if there's C++ in the base distro, but it wouldn't surprise me that 
> there are a few hunks of that around.  There's no PL/I in recent OpenVMS 
> versions.

Until not that long ago Kednos did have a business.

So likely there are some PL/I on not recent VMS versions
out there.

>> (only counting traditional native compiled languages - so excluding 
>> Java, PHP, Python etc.)
> 
> What's the rationale for the distinction between interpreted, JIT'd, and 
> compiled?  While in practice there can be run-time performance 
> differences, all three of those languages are in common and very 
> widespread use.  Having at least Python in the base OpenVMS distro would 
> work around some of the issues with and limitations of DCL, for 
> instance.  We'd have a better choice for hacking SYSUAF data through 
> unsupported RMS access or unsupported output-parsing access for 
> instance, and integrated support via $getuai and $setuai within the 
> vmspython bits.  Programming languages are programming languages, 
> whether interpreted, JIT'd or compiled.  Much like the whole "worm or 
> virus or trojan". that difference has become a distinction of little or 
> no pragmatic difference.

I do not have anything against these languages on contrary.

But in the traditional VMS world such languages has either not been
used or only been used for secondary purposes.

If VMS has to become successful then VMS world will need to become
more like the rest of the world.

And that means a lot of business code will be written in such
languages.

So even though this group is sort of a fourth tier in todays
VMS world, then they need to move up.

>> 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.
> 
> I do see a fair number of C++ questions around, though for other 
> platforms.

I was only talking about VMS.

> We'll still be dealing with C and Microsoft Windows and Unix/Linux in 
> twenty years.

Yes.

Arne