Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!ihnp4!ho95e!wcs From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS! Message-ID: <2045@ho95e.ATT.COM> Date: 8 Mar 88 04:21:24 GMT References: <1636@tulum.UUCP> <68@musky2.MUSKINGUM.EDU> Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46323-Bill.Stewart.,2G218,x0705,) Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ Lines: 81 :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). VMS may be evil, but it's not stupid (unlike IBM operating systeems.) The major difference is probably that UNIX is a development environment, while VMS is a production environment. Also, as Barry Shein points out, UNIX software can be used everywhere; VMS software is only useful on VAXen and a few VMS-imitators (some of the mini-supers). While UNIX does have portability problems, after any VMS version upgrade you can *hear* the applications breaking. There are features of VMS that I wish UNIX had (file versioning, batch process control, decent Fortran libraries), but you don't have as much flexibility for developing new software - and you could add these things to UNIX if you wanted; if you think adding real UNIX capability to VMS is easy, look at EUNICE and think some more. UNIX is a better environment for learning about computer systems, developing tools for non-computer problems, and generally having a good time. You should keep some VMS systems around - partly to expose your students to other systems, partly to let your fortran grinders grind fortran (though DEC may provide VMS fortran on ULTRIX as well as VMS). In article <68@musky2.MUSKINGUM.EDU> terrell@musky2.UUCP (Roger Terrell) writes: :We have both UNIX and VMS here at Muskingum, and my experience is that both :VMS ADVANTAGES: : - VMS is *friendly*; more so than any flavor of UNIX Yuk! VMS HELP is friendly, and VMS commands are a bit more consistent than UNIX's, but everything is so Clunky! Each level of a directory looks different, half the commands feel like JCL, and you can't just pop up a process to do something when you want it. I suppose the one other friendliness feature it has is DCL command-line editing, but I've used ksh long enough I've forgotten that vanilla sh users don't have it :-) : - the Run-time library that comes with VMS is extremely powerful and :is getting better still in the upcoming version of VMS (5.0). If you leave aside math libraries (which VMS does very well) I'd say UNIX does better. Some UNIX versions have shared libraries (which I assume VMS provides); these are a big win. : - VMS is much more secure, although this does not mean much in an Most of its security comes through obscurity, or through setting all the defaults to secure values. A tightly administered UNIX system can be just about secure, and *if you don't like things you can fix them* (well, assuming you've got source.) The recent NASA SPAN breakins were because a major VMS security bug was discovered (heck, the ink on the C-2 certification was hardly dry!) and it took DEC *months* to get around to installing the fix in Europe. : - The DEC compilers are VERY nice. Yep. : - VMS documentation blows UNIX documentation out of the water (someone No. VMS documentation blows V7 documentation out the water, at least for tutorial purposes. If you want user-friendly documentation, AT&T can probably out-weigh VMS documentation. But if you want to find something quickly, UNIX docs are better. (Admittedly, VMS HELP covers the equivalent of most of the things I look up in the manual.) : - The editors on VMS (TPU especially) are quite powerful. Foo. Look at most Emacsen. (I use vi, personally.) : - The UNIX shell "languages" are much better than DCL. This is largely because: : - UNIX has better facilities to deal with programs which use :more than one process. and : - Many text-oriented tools are available. : - UNIX has UUCP (and, therefore, Usenet) ** major plus here ** A mixed blessing, but it has its uses. -- # Thanks; # Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs # So we got out our profilers and debuggers and editors and various other # implements of destuction and went off to clean up the tty driver...