From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 19:20:50 -0500 From: Dennis Lee Bieber Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Could you write a BSD like os in ADA? Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 20:20:53 -0400 Organization: IISS Elusive Unicorn Message-ID: References: <94756e03-7788-4032-a70b-3a0468fc3af9@googlegroups.com> <2b473012-b01e-4c46-add5-048889bf20df@googlegroups.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 6.00/32.1186 X-No-Archive: YES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 108.68.179.16 X-Trace: sv3-IzJLdU8c7Lzpijnohnep5f7nrjfp/woxPyfUFYtY86rM2h9N28Svd+iqr4Uf9wu+rTWCTSN7XpC7+re!MW5gHyqzPazyi1KnCSLrLfS9zh//9K1JqUemWmK6J4Uj4uWkuQ3BPgeWzjoKraMrk+gv37a7Htwd!evqKLDY43waDmAj4nRPfW9HDW8A= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3442 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:31556 Date: 2016-08-24T20:20:53-04:00 List-Id: On Wed, 24 Aug 2016 15:10:07 +0000 (UTC), Bob Broderbund declaimed the following: >What is great about all the VMS compilers is the common interface to systems >services. BASIC on VMS is as intrinsically powerful as any other language on >VMS. Yet, I think IBM's FORTRAN IV was certainly better than any other >FORTRAN '66 or IV compiler (including DECs) and IBM's VS FORTRAN (77) is >also certainly good. It's not clear DEC's FORTRAN 77 was better except in >the context of VMS where it had more interface, easily. You could accomplish >the same sort of thing with IBM's VS FORTRAN although you would need to do >it in assembler. DEC's Fortran kept up until F95. There is nothing newer and Many moons ago, I got tasked with speeding up an application reading mag-tape. The original port to VMS F77 ran noticeably slower than the original PDP-11 code (Macro-11 I suspect). What I concluded was that the use of FORTRAN I/O on the tape was the bottleneck -- since FORTRAN I/O is natively blocking. Without hitting assembly, VMS F77 allowed me to patch in a double-buffered queued I/O function on the tape-drive OPEN() call, leaving all the rest of the application untouched. Made for a /major/ speed-up as the application no longer was waiting for tape I/O at each read. Instead the tape was being read "in advance" into a second buffer while the other buffer was being processed. VMS was a very nice OS -- especially for IPC (mailboxes being capable of sharing; not like the socket interface which is mainly 1-to-1). The only other OS I've seen that supported IPC of a similar nature had the minor flaw that it was a global memory system [no protected memory]: AmigaOS message ports. VMS ASTs and Event Flags made for very easy asynchronous I/O processing. -- Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/