[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

Simon Clubley clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Thu Feb 3 14:03:49 EST 2022


On 2022-02-03, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/22 10:43, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> 
>> 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.
>
> But Simon was talking about userland, not OS kernel stuff.
>

The RTL stuff is also in userland as well. For example, libc is not
part of the kernel (at least on the Unix variants I am aware of).

>> 
>> 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.   :-)
>
> I won;t be holding my breath.  :-)
>

Those people need to make sure those languages are not write-only
languages when doing this. Here is flashing an LED in various programming
languages and the Rust one is rather interesting.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/multilingual-blink-for-raspberry-pi-pico/

The Rust one is doing explicit setup of the clocks and PLLs by calling
a library whereas the other ones leave it implicitly to the libraries
they are using, but what you should be looking at is the general "feel"
of the various languages and especially the Rust one.

I can tell you that my bare metal clock/PLL setup code is way more readable
than that, even when I am doing the whole thing myself without the help
of a library. :-)

>> 
>> And most flavors got way better string handling than
>> C and Fortran.
>
> And, how much string handling do you need for the average userland
> program?
>

For starters, everytime you do something related to parsing, a lot.

Simon.

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



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