Original author here. C worked on VMS but it was not a good match. VMS used complex data structures and async for kernel comms ($QIO) and the C standard library was built with other expectations. Setting up and handling syscalls was cumbersome and the POSIX style library was slow.
I still remember picking up VAX Pascal for an other gig and getting a decent taste for the delight that VMS systems level coding was. Yes, Pascal was better suited for that than C on VMS. Fun times :)
Ah, thanks for the response! My experience in the same timeframe was using C and Fortran on VMS, though I suppose the work I was doing wasn't digging into the same level of detail as you did.
I still remember picking up VAX Pascal for an other gig and getting a decent taste for the delight that VMS systems level coding was. Yes, Pascal was better suited for that than C on VMS. Fun times :)