marketing vs. demerit

[Daniel R. Levy]

In article <1988Apr24.004626.3209 at utzoo.uucp>, henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> > VMS and big VAXEN are successes NOW in TECHNICAL MARKETS...
> 
> If you think this says anything about the merits of gotos in DCL, please tell
> me whether you think Reagan's election victory in 1984 constituted popular
> endorsement of his policies on, say, abortion.  Or whether the sales of the
> IBM PC are due to the beauty and elegance of its memory-addressing model.
> Or whether OS/360 was the reason people bought IBM 360s.

Ha, ha, I guess.  To use your Reagan example, one might say that his position
on abortion was not sufficient to hurt his campaign.  Likewise, any supposed
"technical opposition" to gotos in DCL AND ESPECIALLY THE ABSENCE OF
ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES are not enough, in DEC's view, to warrant support of
such structures.  DEC has indeed revised DCL many times in the recent past.
Alternatives to the goto appear to be at the bottom of the list of things
they worry about, and they supply to a largely technical clientele.  Face it,
Henry.  Gotos are a pinprick on the surface of all technical concerns in the
computer world.  If they were that big a deal, DCL would support all the
C-like control structures that the UNIX shells do.

> Marketing success and technical merit are largely unrelated.  Oh, technical
> merit *helps* to sell things, but it's by no means a requirement.  IBM has
> built a multinational empire on aggressive marketing and excellent support
> of usually-inferior equipment.

Yes, you'd do well to keep that in mind, that "technical merit" in and of its
ivory-tower little self is not the be-all and end-all of the world.  Before
trying to dump on DEC a la IBM, however, keep in mind that IBM sells primarily
to business customers, who don't know a goto from a RAM chip, whereas DEC
sells primarily to technical installations and research institutions.
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