[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <7j97blF34f1s1U11 at mid.individual.net>,
	Bob Eager <rde42 at spamcop.net> writes:
> On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:03:30 +0200, P. Sture wrote:
> 
>> In article <7j7128F34epr5U2 at mid.individual.net>,
>>  billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>> 
>>> In article <slrnhcqtmn.n64.rivie at stench.no.domain>,
>>> 	Roger Ivie <rivie at ridgenet.net> writes:
>>> > On 2009-10-08, Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>> >> It was  Fortran IV on a Univac 1100 running Exec-8.  Of course, the
>>> >> programs in question were also proof that it is not only C that gets
>>> >> used for the wrong purposes.  These were business applications
>>> >> written in Fortran by engineers who needed something to doto keep
>>> >> them busy during slow summers.
>>> > 
>>> > A friend of mine wrote a compiler in Microsoft's FORTRAN for CP/M.
>>> 
>>> I know (knew) of at least one commercial COBOL compiler that claimed to
>>> be written in COBOL.  It's not just people writing business apps in C
>>> that are using the wrong tool for the job.
>>> 
>>> 
>> I remember reading the case for doing that for one of those COBOL
>> compilers, and it seemed pretty convincing at the time. To me anyway.
>> 
>> But this brings us to the price of compilers. Most of my customers in
>> the VAX era had a COBOL compiler and that was it. Wrong tool or not,
>> COBOL did get used for systems programming on occasion (and yours truly
>> did it, though only for low volumes of data).
> 
> I was always amazed at the amount of stuff written in FORTRAN. I used 
> something for monitoring users' terminals, and that was in FORTRAN.

I have seen an amazing bunch of stuff written in a lot of different
languages.  Screen Control routines in COBOL.  Editors and even a
database system written in Fortran.  And most of them required that
you violate some standard at some point in the program.  Amazing what
some people will do to save a buck or prove a point.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>