[Info-vax] Which programming language would you like to see officially supported on VMS ?

[Dirk Munk]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> For the programming languages which are not currently available for VMS,
> which of them would you like to see become available and officially
> supported by VSI ?
> 
> For me, a modern scripting language such as Python, with integrated
> VMS support built in, would top that list.
> 
> Yes, I know Python is available at the moment, but it's not officially
> supported by HPE or VSI.
> 
> Are there any other scripting languages or compiled languages you
> would like to see become available on VMS ?
> 
> I'm asking just in case there are languages out there with a hidden
> underlying desire by their users to run on VMS that VSI or the rest
> of the VMS community are not aware of.
> 
> Simon.
>


Look at the market for VMS. Many customers for VSI will be existing VMS 
customers. They will want to port their applications from previous VMS 
platforms to the present x86-64. They will expect to find the 
traditional VMS languages, preferably versions that comply to the latest 
specifications of those languages. As usual with newer versions of 
compilers, a 1:1 port will not be possible, newer compilers will be 
stricter etc. But that is better than having to rewrite your application 
in another language. In that case, a move to Unix, Linux, Windows is far 
more likely.

Mumps was mentioned. I know it was / is used in hospitals etc. , and VMS 
was very strong in hospitals. Seems logical to me to provide a mumps 
compiler then.

Pascal is bit problematic. Pascal was never meant for production, it was 
a language meant for education. But just as with Unix and C, it 
'escaped' from the schools and universities to production. Mr. Wirth, 
the designer of Pascal was not at all pleased with that. He designed the 
Modula language for production. It has the Pascal syntax, just as the 
other offspring of Pascal, Ada.  So, is Pascal still being used on VMS?

Ada is a language for very reliable applications, I have always been 
told. Seems to me as a typical VMS language.

Other languages? There are more than 11,000 ......  A new language 
should fit in the VMS environment. I'm sure you can make any script 
language run on VMS, but does it add something, apart from "look, we can 
do that too"? It should add to the functionality of VMS, just having it 
as something that has no real connection to VMS is not useful in my 
opinion. Why should you write a script language application on VMS, if 
you can do it on Linux or Windows as well? What does VMS add for such an 
application?