11 Jul
2024
11 Jul
'24
1:38 a.m.
On Wed, Jul 10, 2024 at 3:23 PM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I can not imagine trying to translate system code in
this way.
Marc, you are better than that - proof by lack of imagination is not very
effective😘
Seriously, the "VAX Compiler" that Paul describes made a great deal of
sense to the VMS team when it was developed. It's all about *economics*,
not technical purity. And solution actually worked really well; as Paul
points out, it lived for many different ISAs that followed VAX at DEC and
now VSi.
What I always was amazed by was the Cutler use assembler in the first place
since DEC had production quality BLISS compilers. But as Dave Cane [VAX750
lead] once put it, it was the world's greatest assembler machine. Dave
(famously) hated BLISS but was one heck of an assembly programmer. VMS
both at the kernel and systems level, was (is) in assembler, so treating
the VAX as a HLL and "compiling" to a new ISA was solid economics.
ᐧ