Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!eos!aurora!labrea!decwrl!decvax!mandrill!musky2!terrell
From: terrell@musky2.MUSKINGUM.EDU (Roger Terrell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <68@musky2.MUSKINGUM.EDU>
Date: 2 Mar 88 15:43:04 GMT
References: <1636@tulum.UUCP>
Reply-To: terrell@musky2.UUCP (Roger Terrell)
Organization: Muskingum College, New Concord, OH
Lines: 45

In article <1636@tulum.UUCP> hirai@swatsun.uucp (Eiji "A.G." Hirai) writes:
>	Is VMS as horrible as I suspect or am I alone an thinking this?
>Please help shed the light for us!  Please tell us what you think would be
>reasons why you wouldn't buy VMS! (or why you would). 

We have both UNIX and VMS here at Muskingum, and my experience is that both
have distinct advantages:

VMS ADVANTAGES:
   - VMS is *friendly*; more so than any flavor of UNIX
   - the Run-time library that comes with VMS is extremely powerful and
is getting better still in the upcoming version of VMS (5.0).
   - VMS is much more secure, although this does not mean much in an
academic environment unless there is a lot of research and/or the
administrative people are paranoid.
   - The DEC compilers are VERY nice.
   - VMS documentation blows UNIX documentation out of the water (someone 
pointed out that you don't find VMS manuals in a bookstore;  that is correct,
but it is not bad.  It is because VMS is so much larger and is designed for
a larger type of machine).
   - The editors on VMS (TPU especially) are quite powerful.

UNIX ADVANTAGES:
   - Many text-oriented tools are available.
   - The UNIX shell "languages" are much better than DCL.
   - UNIX has better facilities to deal with programs which use
more than one process.
   - UNIX has UUCP (and, therefore, Usenet) ** major plus here ** 


I certainly would not say that an all-VMS campus is a good thing, if for
no other reason than that students should be exposed to several different
operating systems.  The thing that I prize UNIX most for is UUCP/Usenet.
The thing that I prize VMS most for is its powerful software development
tools.

--Roger

P.S.: Let us know how it turns out...

 
-- 

Roger Terrell
Muskingum College			...cbosgd!musky2!terrell (UUCP)
New Concord, OH  43762