rconn%brl@sri-unix.UUCP (07/01/83)
From: Rick Conn <rconn@brl> In all of these recent discussions, I feel that an important point is being missed. I fully agree that CP/M, UNIX, VMS, ITS, etc, are different "breeds of cat," and I don't think that anyone would question this. In the world in which I find myself, however, I have access, in one form or another, to ALL of these breeds of cat, and I find that I am constantly comparing them. The comparison is not from the point of view of the internal operation of the system, but from the point of view of a tool I can use to run an application. Attributes such as quality of tools, speed of tools, availability of system, reliability of system, ease of use of tools, familiarity with tools, and quality and availability of documentation are considered when I make a selection. As a user, I find that the fact that TENEX is a multitasking OS with a signficant degree of power to be inconsequential in my decision- making process. The fact that the TENEX system I access is often heavily-loaded when I need it and that it runs very slowly, causing me to expend significantly more time than if I used the UNIX system I access causes me to stay away from it for the most part. With these attributes in mind, of all of the systems I access, my personal ZCPR2 system comes closer to filling the requirements than the others. I am even into the mode these days of programming in FORTRAN-77 using the WordMaster and WordStar editors under ZCPR2 and then uploading the result to VAX/VMS for compilation and testing. Minor problems, of course, are corrected using EDT on the VAX, and the final version is downloaded to ZCPR2 for further work and backup. So, I would like to say that it DOES make sense to compare these widely different operating systems, especially if the basis of comparison is the user interface and the attributes I listed above. People will soon be finding that they have an increasing number of choices like this to make. As a plug, for my money, ZCPR2 and UNIX (depending on application) are the winners, with VAX/VMS running second. Of course, the machines they are running on make a difference in this choice. Rick