[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-02-02, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

Because C has turned out to be a better choice than Fortran for
writing userland tools so you would choose C (at a minimum) for
writing such tools today.

>> 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.
>

Pascal and the Modula variants offer far more than C. Fortran does not
when it comes to implementing userland tools.

Simon.

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