[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 2/3/22 14:03, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 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.
> 

And yet, the people working with STVOS didn't seem to have the problems
you are having.  I guess because  no one told them it was impossible
they just went ahead and did it.

bill