[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 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.
> 

If the only tool you have is a hammer. . . .  And the boss generally 
does not care HOW you did it as long as it works and you didn't break 
any laws!