[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[dthi...@gmail.com]

>On Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 8:05:01 AM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> National Computing Group 
> West Mifflin, PA 
> 
> Document, plan and execute the modernization of Fortran applications 
> running on OpenVMS systems to a virtualized Windows Server environment. 

I'd like to point out to everyone that this posting specifically calls out modernizing FORTRAN, which CANNOT be done on OpenVMS, as the OpenVMS FORTRAN compiler is over 25 years old. The commercial and scientific FORTRAN code base out there is massive, as is the commercial COBOL code base. I am aware of many companies modernizing their FORTRAN code bases to use the new object oriented methods of the later FORTRAN standards, which can be compiled with the Intel Fortran compiler and the later gfortran compilers.

I've complained to both HPE and VSI for years that you can't attract new developers to the platform, and thus grow your customer base, if you don't provide modern software development tools and tool chains.

VSI Fortran is pretty much just rebranded HPE Fortran (FORTRAN-95 standard, and not a complete implementation of it either). Later FORTRAN standards (2003, 2008, 2108) have fully embraced object oriented code practices and C interoperability.

In the same vein, neither HPE nor VSI have upgraded the C and C++ compilers to the latest ANSI/ISO language standards, which is delaying VSI's efforts to port the latest versions of C++ and LLVM on X86_64.

While I fully understand and agree with VSI's priority of 1) Stabilizing and rebranding the Alpha and Integrity code base, 2) Porting OpenVMS to X86_64, and then 3) modernizing the compilers (and hopefully tool chains), you have to wonder how much further they would be in the port and how many less customers would have been lost if compiler development efforts had been accelerated in parallel.

Kudos to VSI's backers for providing the financial support to start and keep VSI running since 2014. It took HP Non-Stop 10 years to port to X86_64, as they proudly announced to Encompass in an all-Non-Stop issue of the magazine. Let's hope VSI can beat that porting time, before we lose even more of the mostly loyal OpenVMS customer base.

Also Kudos to VSI for trying to modernize OpenVMS development environment just a bit in the interim with the VMS IDE.