[Info-vax] Assembly languages

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-04-10, Richard Maher <maher_rjSPAMLESS at hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/04/2022 10:44 pm, Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote:
>> On Saturday, April 9, 2022 at 2:51:56 PM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> 
>>> And with that experience, I believe the time for assembly language
>>> is well and truly past, unless it's needed for something specific
>>> such as some inline assembly fragment to access a CPU-specific
>>> register (for example), or really low-level stuff such as the
>>> initial interrupt
>> 
>> I agree for production use, but disagree as a general rule notably
>> for OpenVMS. It's the only 'language' every single OpenVMS system has
>> available. I have a dozen or so small tools I needed over the years. 
>> Silly things like a 'strings' program, a patch tool for RMS indexed
>> files, and more. Using Macro I can provide them as text to customers
>> who would not readily accept binaries.
>> 
>> Hein.
>
>   Remember when inner-mode code and protected sub-systems were essential.
>
> Happy days.

>From a _security_ point of view, VMS has only ever had one inner mode,
just like other operating systems.

Once you are in one of the hardware inner modes, you can get to the
others without any additional privileges required on the part of the
account doing it.

As for protected sub-systems, Linux has mandatory access controls in which
you can even control which TCP/IP ports a process is allowed to use.

Other MAC options are also available.

Simon.

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