why learn UNIX

[wcs at ho95e.UUCP]

In article <1977 at ncoast.UUCP> btb at ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) writes:
>How much does dec pay these guys to knock Unix in favor of VMS?  VMS is 
>like an advanced MSDOS for minicomputers... Unix is sheer brilliance,
>simplicity of design & function...
.........
>I don't have to sell Unix to these non-believers... either they retire, or
>they will have to learn it within the next 5 years, because in the free
>market, productivity and standardization are the restoring force, and with
>this force, Unix has been the single stable eigenstate for the past 10+years.

Ok, so I like UNIX too, and I' rather not do development on VMS (or
--OH, NO--- TSO, or MS-DOS), but VMS does have its good points.
In the real world, there's a *lot* of adequate-quality software serving
business needs, and while you or I may not think COBOL-written
accounting programs are any fun, a lot of businesses need accounting,
and it's a lot harder to do high-performance transaction processing on
UNIX systems than on VMS.  Similarly, for number-crunching, I'd rather
have the flexibility of C++ to work in, but there are a lot of
heavy-duty F0RTRAN scientific subroutine packages that I'd rather reuse
than rewrite, and a lot of scientific programming can be done
adequately without good recursive control structures, and nobody's ever
claimed f77 was a model of optimum high-speed code generation.

While VMS version changes are probably more painful than UNIX version
changes, you can change hardware without changing your object code,
and that's worth a lot.  There are some obvious costs to staying with
DEC hardware, but they do a good job of supporting their customers, and
that keeps them, and VMS, in business.

You know all the disclaimers I'm supposed to add here.


-- 
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G-202, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs