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

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-01-08, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 1/8/2019 8:19 AM, 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 ?
>
> I don't.
>

I didn't think I was going to get any clear answers because of the
reasons people have given. I still asked anyway just in case I was
missing something.

>
> Approach #2:
>
> I will start by distinguishing between:
> * Languages for primary applications (applications directly supporting
>    the organizations main purpose)
> * Languages for supporting applications (applications supporting
>    The primary applications ? integrations, web front ends, operation
>    automation etc.)
>
> Languages for primary applications.
>
> Based on VSI priorities and previous owners actions it seems like 
> Fortran, Cobol, Basic, Pascal and C are more used than C++, Ada and
> PL/I.
>
> Based on my subjective impressions from here it seems like Fortran,
> Cobol and C are more used than Basic and Pascal.
>
> That leads to the following 3 tiers:
>
> Tier 1 = Fortran, Cobol, C
> Tier 2 = Basic, Pascal
> Tier 3 = C++, Ada, PL/I
>

I suspect that is pretty close to the truth.

>
> Based on my subjective impressions from here it seems like Python is
> also quite popular in the VMS world.
>

Python is quite popular _everywhere_ because of how versatile it is.
For example, you can use the same language for website backends,
scientific libraries (ie: SciPy), art design plugins (in Blender)
and in game engines (in Panda3D).

> The support/interest for PHP and  Perl seems more limited.
>

Probably because the languages are more limited, especially PHP
which I have not really seen used outside of website development.

> That leads to the following 3 tiers:
>
> Tier 1 = DCL
> Tier 2 = Java, Python
> Tier 3 = PHP, Perl
>

I'll go with that in the absence of better data.

Thanks to everyone for your replies. It was interesting seeing
your reasoning.

Thanks,

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world