MACALLSTR@vax1.physics.oxford.ac.UK (03/25/88)
It's fruitless pounding away on the merits/demerits of VMS/UNIX/any other O.S. As one's views are usually coloured by the system on which one was nurtured, there is a very strong ( religious-like ) tendency to see that as the only way to do things. I have had several years experience of a few different IBM operating systems, VMS and others and realise that each has its strong and weak points. Operating systems will, inevitably, progress towards some standard and, increasingly, the details of the operating system will be of concern only to the 'system programmers'. The users ( those performing the real work for which computers were designed in the first place ) will run packages via menus/ windowing systems/ development tools/ etc : all this software being identical at the user level whatever operating systems might be running on the hardware 'underneath'. If anyone has a neat way of implementing a good feature of one system on another system let's hear about that but none of the flame on/off stuff - let's blow out the candles. John