[Info-vax] Most popular application programming languages on VMS ?

[gérard Calliet]

Le 08/01/2019 à 15:19, Bill Gunshannon a écrit :
> On 1/8/19 8:51 AM, abrsvc wrote:
>> On Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 8:19:14 AM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> All this talk about programming languages has made me wonder what
>>> the most popular application programming languages are on VMS, both
>>> today and in the past.
>>>
>>> Since the language options are going to vary with application type
>>> (you are not going to see a lot of scientific programming in COBOL
>>> for example :-)), this is across the VMS base as a whole and not
>>> across one specific section of it.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know the answer ?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Simon.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
>>> Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
>>
>> I can only talk about the ones for the sites that I support...
>>
>> The most common that I see are:
>>
>> FORTRAN
>> COBOL
>> C
>> BASIC
>>
>> Others seen but not particularly actively used in new development:
>>
>> DIBOL
>> MACRO-32
>> PASCAL
>>
> 
> Don't forget Ada.  The VAX running VMS had one of the
> first validated compilers and saw use pretty much from
> the very first VAX to hit the streets.  I saw it in the
> very early 80's.
> 
> bill
> 
+1

But I dont't know how many of them went to DEC Ada Alpha. THe few who 
used GNAT Ada Itanium are no more here (said by Adacore, difficult to 
evaluate because they have a political decision of stopping their 
support for VMS).

It seems that thinking about a future for Ada on VMS involves being able 
of addressing the complete set of needs: support and port (to x86)  of 
all the VAX and Alpha Ada compiler (DEC Ada first, but there are another 
Ada compiler for VAX/VMS), support and port (to x86) of GNAT Ada 
Itanium, and creating an Ada compiler for VMS x86.

Everything is possible, and it seems it would be better to have a global 
offer on this domain - everything is possible *if* it can make sense in 
term of business, for sure.

To have an Ada compiler on VMS x86 it can be made by 2 different means:
- gcc cross compiled from Linux - as we have made for our built for VMS 
Itanium, => I'm not sure it is even possible, with issues of 
compatibility in pushing a strange gcc idiomatic x86 image in a llvm world,
- Adacore will have this year a prototype of Ada compiler using LLVM as 
a back end ; we can plug this front end to the VMS LLVM back end => it 
is the most rational idea, but we'll have to wait from Adacore, and 
Adacore says llvm will never be their principal stream of development.

Gérard Calliet