[Info-vax] Pascal question

[Dave Froble]

On 1/21/2019 8:18 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/21/2019 4:57 PM, John Reagan wrote:
>> On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 4:20:58 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 1/21/2019 4:05 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> On 1/21/19 3:41 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>> On 1/21/2019 1:53 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>>> On 1/21/2019 1:07 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>>>> Maybe it was time to add 25-50 convenience functions to
>>>>>>> VMS Pascal?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> People expect more today. And adding them would show some
>>>>>>> progress. And the effort should not be that big aka low hanging
>>>>>>> fruit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Or, one can build a library  of often used capabilities ....
>>>>>
>>>>> Of course.
>>>>>
>>>>> But it would be better if the standard language runtime came
>>>>> with such functionality instead of having hundreds of developers
>>>>> each implement their own.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is not like uppercasing is a very special function that
>>>>> only very few need.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is relative common.
>>>>>
>>>>> And many other mostly newer languages certainly has it.
>>>>
>>>> So push the Pascal Standards Committee to add it.  :-)
>>>
>>> Not going to happen.
>>>
>>> But since VMS Pascal already have several extensions compared
>>> to ISO Pascal, then the lack of it in the standard should not
>>> prevent VSI from adding it.
>>
>> Good point.  Just as soon as a real customer writes that on the back
>> of a $100 bill, I'll get right on it.  I'll call STR$UPCASE for you.
>> :)
>
> I know you have priorities.
>
> My thinking is just along the lines of:
> * it will take some time until the VMS Pascal users start
>    running their production on VMS x86-64.
> * many improvements of Pascal would be a lot of work to
>    implement and would certainly be a no go from a
>    priority perspective
> * but maybe just maybe it would make sense to release
>    a new Pascal version with some easy stuff (a few
>    bug fixes, a bunch of new predefined functions, a few
>    extra PEN files) to show that VMS is on the move - throw
>    us a few appetizers while we are waiting for the big meal
>
> Arne
>
>

Well, that's one of the poorer ideas I've read today, even this year ...

You may be aware that John is rather busy insuring that languages needed 
to port VMS to x86 are working correctly on x86, right?

Anything detracting from that slightly important task just might be 
considered "poor judgement"?

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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