Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu
From: mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu (John D. McCalpin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Defend us from VMS! (etc)
Message-ID: <12129@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 4 Mar 88 16:25:43 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 25

(1) VMS Fortran is available under ULTRIX.
    For my numerically intensive codes, it compiles 4 times faster than
    f77, and the resulting code runs twice as fast (on an 11/780).

(2) The Fortran-8x proposed standard is very different from DEC VMS Fortran.
    This is because (a) the VMS extensions are NOT an industry standard -
    they are a DEC standard ! ; and (b) many of the extensions in Fortran-8x
    are not standardizations of existing features, but are completely new
    implementations and/or syntaxes.

If one can put aside one's religious biases, it is not hard to see that
VMS is a powerful and reasonably robust operating system.  

My observations are that VMS is preferred by novice and occassional users
and that UNIX is preferred by people who are doing software development
full-time.

I have no interest in getting stuck in a single-vendor environment.

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John D. McCalpin	 Control Data PACER Fellow

mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu 	 (128.186.3.1)
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