[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-01-27, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 1/27/2022 11:25 AM, John Reagan wrote:
>> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 3:39:38 AM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
>>> Why C, when there are better languages?
>> 
>> If you are about to use the B-word, better is relative.
>
> Obviously.
>
> But not everybody is in love with C.
>
> Personally I consider C a fine language for OS kernel development
> but not so great a language for more regular applications. And
> DIR is really an application.
>
> I am not good at VMS Basic, so I would prefer VMS Pascal.
>
>:-)
>

Pascal is acceptable, but Ada would be better. :-)

On a more serious note, what would be an acceptable programming language
for userland tools which need to be shipped as part of the operating system ?

Let's look at the language options for creating a new userland level
tool on VMS today:

Macro-32 and BLISS are absolutely unsuitable for obvious reasons.

Basic appears to be a poor choice when compared to the alternatives available.

Ada is no longer available on VMS going forward.

C is suitable, but is low-level.

C++ is a possibility (provided a sane subset of the language is used).
However, am I the only one who finds that C++ compilers across all
operating systems get slower and slower as new versions some out ?
Look at how long it takes to compile the LLVM toolkit for example. :-( :-(

Pascal is also very much a possibility.

Fortran and COBOL are not suitable for writing operating system userland
tools.

So what programming language would you use for a new userland tool on VMS
if you couldn't use Pascal ? As far as I can see, it's only C or maybe C++.

Simon.

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