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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/1/2020 12:04 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2020-12-01 15:39:17 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:
>> On 12/1/2020 10:03 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> 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?
>>
>> :-)

> The volume of existing Objective C code means that language is not going 
> away soon, allowing for an incremental transition to new work in Swift 
> (or Rust or others) as appropriate.
> 
> I don't foresee Swift (or Rust) becoming hugely popular on OpenVMS, either.

Among other issues: they are not available on VMS for npw.

>>> 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.
> 
> As C? No. As Objective C? Yes. Objective C allows all the classic and 
> lower-level C shenanigans (and yes, the downsides of same), while is 
> also fully OO. Which is really handy.

I must admit that I consider the C#/Rust unsafe block approach
much better than C++/Objective-C approach.

Arne