[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/30/2022 9:34 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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?

Or is it the modules?

Modula-2 modules are better than VMS Pascal modules.

Modula-2 modules are practically OO encapsulation capability.

Arne