[Info-vax] ADA and VMS (was Safer programming languages)

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-11-15, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I realize all that.  I would just like to see some comparisons.
> I don't know that any were actually done.  It all goes back to
> a comment I got from someone from the Ada Users Group about 30
> years ago.  I mentioned an interest in a version of Unix rewritten
> in Ada and was quickly informed that while it could be done it
> would result in a useless operating system because the Ada version
> would be very inefficient.  Needless to say, I never tried it.
> Might be fun to dig up some benchmarks and try it, but I always
> prefer real world examples to contrived benchmarks.
>

I think that person was talking (mostly) nonsense.

For example, the original version of RTEMS was written in Ada before
it was ported to C (IIRC, because C was more common in the open source
world and supported more architectures).

Also, look at the sheer amount of boundary checks and descriptor decoding
that VMS does in its APIs. (For example).

Simon.

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