[Info-vax] Meditech in the news

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/7/2022 1:57 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-01-06, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 1/6/2022 10:46 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> One may not like MUMPS and its variants.
>>
>> For those with an strong desire to try MUMPS aka M on VMS, then:
>>
>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/fis-gtm/files/GT.M-Alpha-OpenVMS/V6.2-001/
>>
> 
> After a 5-minute read of the Mumps language syntax, I have come to
> the conclusion that it makes TECO look user-friendly. :-)
> 
> The total of my Mumps knowledge has been acquired over the last few
> minutes and is based on the following:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS#Summary_of_key_language_features
> 
> I really don't like the dynamic nature of variables and the dynamic
> way they are created when first referenced. It makes Mumps look more
> like a scripting language than an application programming language.

Once upon a time script languages must have gotten the name because
they were used for scripts.

Probably around the same time when DEC was one of the worlds biggest IT
companies.

But today script languages are widely used for applications.

Python and PHP must be the two big ones. But there are plenty
of other.

One may not like it, but it is reality.

Slightly related:

https://thestack.technology/supercomputer-files-deleted-kyoto-university-hpe/

<quote>
A Japanese university inadvertently wiped a colossal 77TB of research 
data from its supercomputer after a software update pushed by Hewlett 
Packard Enterprise (HPE) caused a script to go rogue and delete backups.

Kyoto University said 34 million files from 14 research groups had been 
deleted – and nearly a third of them will not get their data back after 
the incident which it blamed squarely on the HPE supercomputing system.

A software update error meant the Cray/HPE system deleted almost all 
files older than 10 days held in large capacity disc storage backup 
rather than just log files. It had initially feared up to 100TB was 
permanently lost.

Hewlett Packard said in a letter published by Kyoto University on 
December 29, 2021 that it took “100% responsibility” for the issue
...
HPE said: “The backup script includes a find command to delete log files 
older than 10 days. In addition to functional improvement of the script, 
the variable name passed to the find command for deletion was changed to 
improve visibility and readability.”
...
The company added: “However, there was a lack of consideration in the 
release procedure of this modified script. We were not aware of the side 
effects of this behavior and released the [updated] script, overwriting 
[a bash script] while it was still running,” HPE admitted. “This 
resulted in the reloading of the modified shell script in the middle of 
the execution, resulting in undefined variables. As a result, the 
original log files in /LARGE0 [backup disc storage] were deleted instead 
of the original process of deleting files saved in the log directory.”
</quote>

Arne