[Info-vax] Listeners in VMS Basic, was: Re: Integrity iLO Configuration?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 7/12/2021 4:37 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
> When I joined out development team in 1997 (after years running an 
> operational unit using the software) I stated that I was fine with a 
> high level language, but I would refuse to use or learn macro -my only 
> experience of a low level language was Z80, and I failed then,and did 
> not want to go through that  again. This was accepted.
> 
> Only twice did I come across issues with the macro - the first time I 
> got someone from the original software house to correct some language 
> translation issue when we moved Germany onto Alpha - two of them spent 
> about 4 hours and change two characters, which worked.
> 
> Next time was during my IA64 port, where 2 bits of macro didn't work, so 
> I recoded one in C, and one in Basic - both based on the function 
> documentation. Both worked.
> 
> Excepting low level stuff, why does anyone use macro?

Possible reasons:
* old habbits
* code that is so old that when the it was original created every
   byte and instruction mattered for end user performance
* the fact that Macro-32 was free and DEC compilers was
   expensive

Arne