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

[gérard Calliet]

Le 21/12/2020 à 02:55, John Reagan a écrit :
> 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.
> 
Hello VMS world,

The old and venerable passion for rewriting - as old and venerable as
the era of Shumpeterian economics: the holy creative destruction - is
getting its feet caught in the carpet of complexity inherited from the
even more  venerable VMS. My delight.

Let's rewrite, my brothers, even if we don't understand much about the
intentions of our ancestors. Let's try to bring back to the mediocre
level of contemporary writings what was stroke of genius after stroke of
genius.

Do not polemic, it's just my testimony of good humor, with this adorable
refrain, a little jewel for me as a Christmas present.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.

Gérard Calliet