[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[chris]

On 01/28/22 00:57, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/27/2022 5:21 PM, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> In article <ssurv4$nm1$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley
>> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>>> 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.
>>
>> What *obvious* reasons?
>
> Not cost efficient.
>
> There is a reason why assembler programming is becoming so rare
> as it is.
>
> Arne
>
>

Difficulty in maintenance, or even finding programmers fluent enough
to get the best results. If C can be a minefield for the unwary, then
you really are on your own with assembler and need to know a lot more
about the underlying machine architecture, os implementation and
more. Asembler only makes sense now for the lowest level system
programming, where there is not enough machine state to support a
high level language...

Chris