[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/30/2022 9:21 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Simon Clubley  <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>> On 2022-01-29, Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>>> Pascal is pretty limited but makes it hard to shoot yourself in the foot.
>>> And most implementations don't use null-terminated strings which are the
>>> most serious source of vulnerabilities in C code.
>>
>> I wouldn't call Pascal "limited". DEC used it to implement VAXELN...
> 
> DEC Pascal... is a lot more than just Pascal.
> But even so, Modula-2 is probably a better choice for implementing a kernel.

It is important to distinguish between Pascal as in ISO Pascal
versus VMS Pascal.

I really like Modula-2. And I believe that PIM/ISO Modula-2 is a
lot more useful than ISO Pascal for real development. But VMS Pascal
is a lot more capable than ISO Pascal.

VMS Pascal has a module system and it has system specific
integer types.

VMS Pascal does not have FOR "C" but VMS calling convention can
do the same.

So what is the key differentiator here? Coroutines? ASM keyword?

Arne