[Info-vax] inertia or fundamentals about langages?

[Dave Froble]

On 5/21/2019 6:35 AM, gérard Calliet wrote:
> I extract a part of the usual discussion about porting or not porting,
> with the usual suspects.
>
> Because there I understand clearly why I don't agree.
>
>  >> If a business is running on VMS and a major part of that business is
>  >> a web server front end and they have to move that front end to a >>
> different platform where is the incentive to leave anything still on >>
> the VMS system?
>
>  >>>> The cost and the effort getting the apps ported off of OpenVMS,
>  >>>> usually.  Inertia.  This is the VSI market for the foreseeable
>  >>>> future.
>
> A port is a translation. Thinking any translation has'nt any other cost
> than (time, effort,...) goes with the prejudice that all langages are
> totally equivalent, and so that total translation is always possible.
>
> This prejudice is largely considered as wrong in linguistics, and,
> transferred in computer sciences - if you say "computers are another
> domain" - it could work theoritically only with pure formal langages
> (and again if we forget the fundamentals about termination problem).
>
> A software is always some sort of langage used to cope with some
> specific issue. The more the software has history, the more the its
> "langage" is idiomatic, and the more the total translation is just a dream.
>
> The dream of a total translation is however always present. It is one if
> the reason each decade brings a new "totally universal" solution, with
> which every tool, object, action, ressource could be unified. In a sense
> Cloud is our "unique" realm these years, as virtualisation has been 5
> years ago, SOA before...
>
> One concrete consequence of this dream is that there are on any site a
> lot of concurrent "unique" realms.
>
> And I agree that any company which gets now VMS is more concerned by the
> difficulty of integration of VMS in its
> not-so-unified-but-will-be-the-future site than by its intrinsik qualities.
>
> Inertia is not at all the major reason not porting out of VMS. The major
> reason is that translating a well adapted langage to its situation to a
> x general langage is just an error, based on an oversight of some
> fundamentals.
>
> My opinion is the opposite about inertia. The dream of an universal
> translation is a lack of effort thinking about the necessity of trading
> with different things different ways.
>
> There are perhaps 2 symetric dreams: (1) thinking My langage Is The
> Langage [example: some VMS[unix,as400,pascal...] fanatics are like that
> :) ] (2) thinking Every Langage is translatable on Every Langage, the
> Universe should be Unified [Example: Every thing will be in the Cloud].
>
> The VMS future is not at all because for some time inertia will protect
> it from other choices. It is because some things will remain on it
> because VMS is more adapted to their problem, and because the "langage"
> which was invented on it for x purpose is the better now for that purpose.
>
> 2 types of work are involved in the future:
> (1) understanding the parts of the software that need VMS, and the parts
> which would be better worked elsewhere, which is to say understanding
> how the specifics of the use match the specifics of VMS and central
> parts developed on it,
> (2) being able to "translate" the parts of the software that are
> translatable, which is creating the "interfaces".
>
> All this said, it is perhaps why "some like it hot" and some not. On my
> side I like it (VMS) :)
>
> Gérard Calliet
>

A "port" is, by definition, a sideways move.  At best it is equal. 
Usually there are losses, and the port is actually a backward move.

To a layman, everything is easy.  That's why they have all that time to 
declare such.  Because they are worthless for doing actual work.


-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486