[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 2/2/22 13:21, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-02-01, Paul Hardy <p.g.hardy at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>>   ?
>>> Fortran and COBOL are not suitable for writing operating system userland tools.
>>
>> Not that I would encourage it as an implementation language these days, but
>> Fortran has been used as such in the past. I believe the Fortran H Extended
>> optimising compiler for the IBM 360/370 was written largely  in Fortran H
>> Extended.
>>
> 
> You are correct about past use. In the context of the discussion,
> I meant they are not suitable for writing userland tools _today_

Why?  Just because there are other languages doesn't obsolete their
use for the task.  If that were true we never needed anything after
C was created.   After all the first Open Source compilers for many
of the languages in use were just x-to-C translators.  P2C, F2C,
heck even GNAT was originally just an Ada to C translator.  And some
are still that way and work just fine. GnuCOBOL for example.

> and I gave an example of where I had seen Fortran used in the
> distant past while I was still in school and before before C got
> established outside of Unix.

Ind I have seen Fortran used for this stuff long after C escaped
into the wild.  There really is no legitimate reason why languages
Pascal, Modula, Fortran, PL/I, or anything else is unsuitable as
long as it is available on the system and there is a programmer
willing to work with it.  After all, in the nd it's all just ones
and zeroes.


bill