[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/27/2022 2:31 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 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++.

I believe Basic would be a lot better than C.

Arne