[Info-vax] OS implementation languages

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-08-25, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2023-08-25 14:18, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2023-08-24, Dennis Boone <drb at ihatespam.msu.edu> wrote:
>>>> That's seriously interesting thanks. So, contrary to what some are
>>>> saying, the idea of writing an OS in such a way was well established
>>>> by the mid-1970s.
>>>
>>> The idea was fairly widespread quite a bit earlier, actually.  Burroughs
>>> did ESPOL (an Algol derivative systems language) in starting in 1966.
>> 
>> Just done some reading about this and the follow-on language NEWP.
>> 
>> It has now become _very_ clear to me that the use of ALGOL-based languages
>> in OS development was very seriously widespread by the time DEC came to
>> design VMS. Pity DEC didn't join them.
>
> Including Multics. Not an outstanding success exactly...
> Most companies that went that way early was way less successful than 
> DEC, so it is kindof strange to claim that DEC did it wrong and they did 
> it right...
>

In way too many cases, marketing success (at least in the short term,
and sometimes in the longer term) doesn't appear to be related to
technical elegance.

After all, we all use Windows...

OTOH, Unix with its portable HLL approach, has outlasted VMS...

Simon.

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