Re: Could you write a BSD like os in ADA?

[Bob Broderbund <bbroderbund@broderbund.com>]

On 2016-08-24, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
> On 24/08/2016 06:12, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>> On 8/23/2016 3:43 AM, Bob Broderbund wrote:
>>
>>> VMS is a good OS but it's far behind MVS and seems to be suffering from a
>>> loss of (management) direction and not enough cash. It probably started
>>> going downhill when it moved from being owned and managed end-to-end by one
>>> company to today where it is spread across two companies for software and
>>> another one or two for hardware.
>>
>> btw,  It is possible now to run VMS on a PC (X86). There
>> is A.V.T company that specializes in this using
>> VirtualBox. I have not tried it
>>
>> http://www.avtware.com/vms-tru64
>
> Do they support DEC Ada?

OpenVMS VAX supports DEC Ada. But there is nothing newer than '83
available. It is not clear whether there will be Ada again on VMS but there
is a rumor Adacore may offer their product after VMS is ported to Intel.

> VMS was not only the best ever OS.

Saying something false over and over again won't make it true.

> It also had the best ever C

I think even the authors of C on VMS wouldn't agree with that! You could ask
in comp.os.vms. I'm pretty sure you'll be surprised at the answer, based on
your comments and my reading of fairly current discussions over there. Some
of the original guys are present.

> FORTRAN 

FORTRAN 77 _maybe_

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
it is not clear there will be although the Intel port makes it much easier
to hope. IBM has probably the best Fortran compiler around today in terms of
compliance and standards adoption, but only for POWER architecture as far as
I know.

> and Ada 83 compilers.

It was certainly very good but arguably not the best.

Bob

>