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From: heintze@fmcsse.enet.dec.com (Siegfried Heintze)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Why use U* over VMS
Message-ID: <16438@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 17 Oct 90 17:47:27 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Reply-To: heintze@fmcsse.enet.dec.com (Siegfried Heintze)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 30

Having used VMS for many years and being terribly ignorant of the different
flavors of U*
I would like solicit comments from programmers experienced in both VMS and U*.

Specifically I would like to know what makes U* a better development
environment.
(I assume there is someone out there who is certain U* is a better development
environment.)

As I understand it, the biggest difference between the capabilities of VMS and
U* is that when
you get U* you get many important tools for free whereas in VMS you have to pay
extra. 

VAXset is an example of a set of tools for VMS that includes LSE (a fully
programmable
language sensitive editor vaguely akin to EMACs editor using templates - I
think), PCA  (Performance Coverage Analyzer, a profiler)
and SCA (source code analyzer - I don't know if U* has a counterpart).  SCA has
been extremely useful because it is integrated with LSE and allows you make very
complex queries about
your source code like "find all the occurences of variables of type x whose name
matches
the pattern *jj*h in the set of routines  whose names match j* in call tree x
..."

So, assuming VAXset is part of the VMS environment, what makes U* better?
(Feel free to answer in the context of "money is of no concern" as well as
"money is significant").
                                                           Sieg