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

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Wednesday, 9 January 2019 18:52:45 UTC, Bill Gunshannon  wrote:
> On 1/9/19 1:28 PM, gérard Calliet wrote:
> > 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.
> > 
> 
> Aren't Ada compilers still required to be validated? Isn't that
> likely to be a work intensive and expensive proposition?  Is
> there enough of a customer base to justify the time and expense?
> 
> bill

Sometimes it's total revenue/profit, not number of customers, that 
counts. So "popularity" isn't necessarily the right word, depending
on where the question is intended to lead.

One such example might be in VMS-hosted embedded-targetted Ada, ie
the product that started life in the VMS V4 era on VAX as XD Ada.
It was a DEC Ada front end (thus familiar to lots of developers of
the day) and a code generator primarily targeting M68K, MIL1750, 
and a few other things likely to be unfamiliar to many readers 
round here. 
XD Ada was also integrated in a marvellously helpful way with the 
VMS debugger, or was it with the VAXELN debugger. Anyway it was
nicely done even on VAX/VMS. It did eventually support VMS on Alpha 
as host.

Last time I looked (3 years ago?) it was still alive and saleable,
if you knew who to call, and subject to the required non-trivial 
budget for mandatory support. There was even a version hosted on 
current VMS on Itanium. 

By a weird chain of (de)mergers and acquisitions it had ended up 
under HP control again (something like DEC+SD-Scicon -> EDS-> 
DECPQ -> HPQ -> DXC-> HP???? doesn't really matter), so who knows 
where its future will be.

Are there many similar VMS-centric products whose future depends 
more on revenue/profit rather than "popularity" ? Who knows...