[Info-vax] VMS device drivers

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/12/2024 7:13 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
> On 12/01/2024 16:43, John Reagan wrote:
> I'm a big fan of eliminating Macro-32 code.
>> I have a long-standing joke of paying $5 per module for any rewrite out
>> of Macro-32 into ANY other language.
> 
> When I joined our programming team in the 90's, I made it clear that I 
> would not attempt to learn macro. I didn't.
> 
> I later did the port from Alpha to Itanium, and I found one piece of 
> macro code that didn't work, so I rewrote in DEC Basic. It was helpful 
> that the function well documented as to it's parameters, and output, so 
> it worked 100%

I believe there are a lot of totally unnecessary Macro-32 code out there.

If I were to make a guess about it:

60% written in Macro-32 in VAX days for performance reasons but without 
actually improving performance

39% written in Macro-32 in VAX days for performance reasons and actually 
did improve performance on VAX but performance is worse on 
Alpha/Itanium/x86-64

0% written in Macro-32 in VAX days for performance reasons and actually 
do improve performance on all platforms

1% written in Macro-32 to do something not easily expressed in HLL

Arne