[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/3/2022 10:17 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 2/3/22 09:21, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> In what way?  :-)  There are a lot of people in the industry today
> that feel that C isn't a good choice for anything.

C with its low level direct access no check to prevent users
from shooting themselves in the foot approach does make
sense for some OS kernel stuff and low level RTL stuff.

In recent years new languages has arrived that allows for
limiting the unsafe stuff to explicit specified blocks.

The:

// your code is checked
unsafe {
     // your code is not checked
}

approach.

And I consider it quite likely that approach will take over from C.

In the next 25-50 years.   :-)

>>>> 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.
> 
> Same question.  In what way?  I have already shown how Fortran was
> used to write an entire userland for the first "POSIX" interface.
> 41 primitives and 50 utilities.

They tend to protect the developers feet a bit.

And most flavors got way better string handling than
C and Fortran.

Arne