why learn UNIX

[Barry Shein]

From: alan at herman.UUCP (Alan Kiecker)
>One of our directors is on an advisory board to one of our state colleges.
>Currently the college is using a VAX VMS system, but is considering moving
>over to UNIX. He has been asked why it would be beneficial for the students
>to learn UNIX; i.e. why should the college bother to convert. If anyone has
>any comments, I would appreciate it, and will forward them on to our
>director. 

First off, the question is not phrased all that well. Do the students
actually plan on "using" UNIX to actually study other things like
programming, compiler design, numerical analysis etc or is the plan
to "learn UNIX"? Well, there's a subtlety there somewhere. Here's
my list anyhow:

	1. Business perspective - Unix offers the college "vendor
	independence", particularly after the first change. Whereas
	VMS is sold only by DEC (and at a hefty cost for both hardware
	and software) there are literally dozens of vendors selling
	UNIX systems ranging from PCs the students can buy for their
	homes to the largest systems on earth. This trend is expected
	to accelerate in the near future.

	This means that this and future acquisitions can be considered
	competitively and better matched with the price and performance
	needs of both the institution and the students.

	2. Industry/University Relations - you can re-read #1 and
	consider what this may mean in terms of involvement between
	the college and interests of those dozens of vendors (and
	their customers) in regards research, internships etc.

	3. Job Perspectives - I invite you to pick up the Sunday
	employment section of a major newspaper (try the Boston Globe)
	and make a hash mark every time you see a UNIX position and
	others. It should be revealing.

	Honeywell noted this week they were introducing a new UNIX
	system because 67% of all new US Govt RFPs are requiring
	UNIX.

	4. Academic considerations - Unix has been highly praised
	for its consistent goals based upon innovative principles
	of software engineering and design. VMS is expensive.

	5. Commonality - Over 90% of all CS departments in the US
	use UNIX. This is most reflected in the number of texts
	available, check out any large college bookstore and compare
	the number of titles available in various computing subjects
	that are available either on UNIX "the O/S", UNIX as an
	application base, a compiler development environment, a systems
	environment or related (eg. Franz Lisp, UCB Pascal, C, ICON,
	modern networking.) Try to find VMS books...

	6. Manuals - The full set of UNIX manuals is readily available
	and inexpensive (a very complete set should cost around $100,
	a more than adequate set probably less half that.) In addition
	to this are many tutorials, self-help etc books available in
	most bookstores. VMS manual sets are several times more
	expensive and not readily available. I've never seen a tutorial
	or self-help type book on VMS in the popular press tho it's
	possible there is one available, anything is possible.

	7. Personal Development - UNIX is available for the home and
	promises to be more so in the very near future, this will
	almost certainly never be true for VMS. Although one can
	argue that this would tend one towards MS/DOS it hardly fulfills
	all the other goals (you didn't ask about MS/DOS anyhow.)

	8. Faculty hiring - If 90% of all CS depts use UNIX there must
	be a few people out there available to teach it.

	9. Future - I'll make the brash prediction here that VMS has
	around 2-5 years (max) left. I don't consider it very responsible
	to teach students a system who's days are numbered. The VAX line
	itself (which VMS is hopelessly tied to) seems to be nearing the
	end of its useful life span.

	10. UNIX has better games :-)

Cheers.

		-Barry Shein, Boston University