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From: info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: RE: Mail to non VMS machines
Message-ID: <5496@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 14-Mar-85 16:20:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.5496
Posted: Thu Mar 14 16:20:22 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Mar-85 04:48:35 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: medin@ucbarpa (Milo Medin)


I agree with you about the lousy f77 compiler, its fairly pitiful.
Someone wanting to do good for 4.2 should write a good f77 compiler
for it.  But if you need fortran, VMS is excellent for that.  I am
biased but not irratiional; I recommended to a Math Dept. a while
back that they convert one or both of their 750's to VMS to run
FORTRAN.  But they didn't want to, because the user interface is
so poor, anyways, thats what they said.  

I guess I have been too hard on DEC in this list, but I'd like to
say that I'll take DEC over IBM or CDC or DG anyday.  I've talked
to many folks who work in DEC research, and they have some truly
incredible stuff.  And they know what they are doing too.  But the
marketing types keep getting in the way, and comprimising performance
for various reasons.  The same is true for IBM, I understand they
had a relatiional database for years before they released it, because
their old database stuff was selling well.  And DEC is probably
slow in coming out with the Microvax II because it would
destroy the 780-750-730-725 market, and take a big chunk out
of the 785 market as well.  And no cluster controller for it yet...
At least, thats true if the Microvax II is as good as the rumours
indicate.


					Milo