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

[John Reagan]

On Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 11:20:15 AM UTC-5, 1tim.... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, January 4, 2021 at 6:35:32 AM UTC-7, Simon Clubley wrote: 
> > On 2021-01-02, Dirk Munk <mu... at home.nl> wrote: 
> > > 
> > > 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? 
> > > 
> > VAXELN was written in a variant of Pascal. 
> > 
> > The Modula variants are effectively dead, while Pascal still has multiple 
> > active compiler options across a range of operating systems. 
> > > Ada is a language for very reliable applications, I have always been 
> > > told. Seems to me as a typical VMS language. 
> > > 
> > Yes it is. Unfortunately, no Ada compiler currently exists, or is likely 
> > to exist, for x86-64 VMS. 
> > > 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? 
> > > 
> > Some of those scripting languages (assuming they come with an added VMS 
> > integration module) are a _far_ better choice for tying together VMS 
> > applications than DCL is. 
> > 
> > Simon. 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP 
> > Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.
> TPU uses Pascal syntax and is very Pascal-like in writing section files....I always assumed (yes, I know..) it was pascal under the hood.
TPU is written entirely in BLISS-32 (and uses some rather clever BLISS macros).  I did see ONE C file to deal with some Motif icons for the DECwindows version.

There probably is some history/rationale on the chosen syntax for TPU but I'd have to do dig around to find it.  Others here might have a better memory about that.