[Info-vax] C and assembly language, was: Re: WHY IS VSI REQUIRING A HYPERVISOR FOR X86 OPENVMS?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2020-12-20, John Reagan <xyzzy1959 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 8:05:52 PM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2020-12-19, Michael C <supers... at gmail.com> wrote: 
>> > 
>> > A LITTLE LESSON DAVE ANYTHING WRITTEN IN C OR RUNNING ON LINUX OR WINDOZE WILL HAVE A VULNERABILITY LIST A MILE LONG. 
>> > 
>> > THAT IS WHY YOU DON'T WANT NO MIDDLE MAN WITH OPENVMS
>> Much of VMS is written in assembly language which is even worse than 
>> C at letting silly errors through. 
>> 
>> However, the latest work in VMS is done using C so that's an 
>> improvement over Macro-32 when it comes to detecting silly errors. 
>> 
>
> "Much"?  I think Clair did a line count/module posting in the last year or so.  The Macro-32 contribution was getting pretty low (less than 20%?)  However, just the difficult and nasty parts that nobody wants to attempt to rewrite.  I'd pay real money to watch somebody try to rewrite the shadow driver out of Macro-32 (pretty much every routine can jump into any other routine in an alternative universe threading scheme).  And I've recently had to look at chunks of DECnet IV and even I couldn't make heads-or-tails out of some of the algorithms.

Make that "Much of VMS was written in assembly language originally ...". :-)

I wonder what Bob thinks about BLISS ? :-)

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.