From VMS to UNIX

[Kenneth A Reek]

I can't	resist throwing	in my $.02 worth on the	subject	of switching from one
operating system to another.

     In	most of	the cases I have observed, the first  real  operating  system
that a person knows is the one he/she likes best (where	"real" means "sophis-
ticated", i.e. complex,	offering lots of services,  etc.).   The  reason  for
this  is simple, as the	person becomes more adept at using the system, he/she
learns more of the personality (i.e. quirks) of	 it,  and  experienced	users
tend to	formulate their	problems in terms of the operations they are so	fami-
liar with.

     When users	go from	one operating system to	another, it is worse than be-
ing a computing	novice,	as a novice would not know what	to expect.  Users ex-
perienced on another system know what to expect	and will judge the new system
in terms of the	one they are familiar with.  This is how we learn, by compar-
ing new	situations against our past experiences.

     The problem with this is that the new system cannot be as good at	being
the  old system	as the old system was.	Until the new system is	learned	in as
much depth as the old one, the new system will be perceived to have shortcom-
ings  in  the  areas it	differs	from the old.  In other	words, the new system
cannot be adequately judged until the judge comes out of the "rut" of  think-
ing in terms of	the old	one.

     Therefore,	it occurs to me	that one measure  of  the  "goodness"  of  an
operating  system  would  be the number	of people who love it that previously
thought	a different system to be the ultimate in sophistication.  I  used  to
love  the CP-V operating system	on the Xerox Sigma computers (I'm now ashamed
to admit) because I was	familiar enough	with it	and its	utilities to be	 able
to accomplish   whatever I wanted to do	quickly	and easily.  However, because
I was thinking in the CP-V rut there was very little that occured to me	to do
that  was at all complex.  Before I started using Unix,	for example, it	never
even occured to	me to take the output of a system utility (such	as  the	 CP-V
equivalent  of	"ls")  and send	it to a	file to	be manipulated with an editor
into a bunch of	commands to do something to the	selected files,	 and  when  I
eventually tried it on the Sigma, I found it easier to just type the commands
themselves.

     The point is simple: until	I started think	of doing things	the Unix way,
I  thought Unix	was a poor substitute for CP-V.	 I am now a devoted Unix fan,
so devoted that	a few years ago	I decided against taking a higher paying  job
primarily because they didn't use Unix.

     I have observed more people "converted" to	Unix than to any  other	 sys-
tem.   I  think	 this is an important metric when measuring the	quality	of an
operating  system,  as it really expresses  differences in  user satisfaction
between systems.

	Ken Reek, Rochester Institute of Technology
	seismo!rochester!ritcv!kar