[Info-vax] How Do You Define Record (Data Structure) Dummy Arguments in

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/22/2019 1:45 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 12/22/2019 11:36 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 12/21/2019 11:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>>> On Thursday, December 19, 2019 at 7:28:34 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> On 12/19/2019 9:47 AM, John Reagan wrote:
>>>>> VAX Pascal V2 had an extensive set of language extensions compared to
>>>>> standard Wirth Pascal (aka ISO 7185).  You can actually write
>>>>> medium/large scale applications using the VAX Pascal V2 extensions.
>>>>> I know of several customers with Pascal applications in the
>>>>> 10s-of-millions of lines.  VSI has active Pascal customers (I'm
>>>>> actually answering a technical question submitted to our support
>>>>> organization in another window...)
>>>> It was a good choice.
>>>>
>>>> Lots of students was taught Pascal back then.
>>>>
>>>> Pascal is way more modern than Cobol, Fortran and Basic.
>>>
>>> I don't think Pascal circa 1975 was more modern than VAX Basic circa
>>> 1985.  Of course the last time I wrote much Pascal code was about 1975
>>> (using the Wirth CDC compiler :)
>>
>> I am far from an expert in VMS basic.
>>
>> But Pascal had the many of the language features that would dominate the
>> next 20-30 years:
>> * declarations required
>> * common data types
>> * 3 types of loops, if and cases
>> * support for recursion
>> * support for complex data structures (incl. variant record)
>> * string type
>> * pointer type (type safe)
>>
>> And on top of that a tradition among Pascal programmers for
>> well structured procedural programming with not too long
>> procedures/functions.
>>
>> Way more modern than Fortran.
>>
>> I would expect it to be more modern than VMS Basic as well.
>> But as I said then VMS Basic is not something I know well.
> 
> Back a while, possibly mid to late 1980s, not sure, it appears that 
> DEC's compiler people took a look at things, and decided that many if 
> not all the languages could be set up to do similar things.  Basic got 
> structures via the RECORD definition, and other enhancements.  The 
> concept is rather simple, if an operation can be done in one language, 
> then it also could be done in others.  All it takes is a little (or lot) 
> of work.
> 
> A nice concept.
> 
> Of course, Basic still has some warts, (return from sub), extensive use 
> of library routines, (good modular programming, but a performance hit). 
> More a jack of all trades than speed at all costs.

Basic is a high level language for expressing the business
logic.

It may not be the fastest language but it has a pretty good
SLOC/FP ratio.

Basic 40-60
Cobol 50-100
Ada 70
PL/I 65-80
Pascal 90
Fortran 105
C 100-125
Assembler 120-300

(various sources - numbers obviously comes with significant uncertainty)

Arne