[Info-vax] Greg Kroah-Hartman on backwards compatibility

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/1/2020 10:03 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> I've spoken at conferences discussing the limits of these API designs, 
> and around more modern and more flexible alternatives.  For many apps, 
> OO is less code for the caller and less errors, while also providing 
> equal and variously better flexibility and isolation and abstraction.

That is definitely the way to go for future API's.

> This adoption does require updating languages and run-times to allow OO 
> and require developers adopting OO. Having started using Objective C 
> after years of C, and using Cocoa from years of OpenVMS APIs, the 
> transition was striking—how much less code was needed, and how much more 
> flexible and capable the resulting apps were.

Shouldn't you be using Swift instead of Objective-C?

:-)

> Do I expect most apps to move from existing designs and implementations? 
> No. Do I expect most OpenVMS developers to move? Slowly, at best. This 
> having just looked at a pile of K&R C. Is breaking existing APIs 
> appropriate? Absent specific requirements or specific limits, and absent 
> a migration path to the new APIs, no. Do I expect VSI to do anything but 
> nibble around the edges of OpenVMS? No. VSI just doesn't have the staff 
> or the budget for that.

Yes.

It will take a lot of man years to create a complete new sets of API's.

> Put differently, BASIC and C and such could be staggeringly better than 
> now, and OpenVMS itself much easier to work with, and so much more than 
> what inflexible APIs including $qio will permit.

Basic and Pascal are obvious languages to utilize higher level API's.

I do not see C in that role.

Arne