smith%eri.DECnet@MGHCCC.HARVARD.EDU ("ERI::SMITH") (12/11/87)
I have personally been irritated by Digital's tendency to consider "PDP-11" and "RSX" synonymous. At one time, they were officially supporting... hmmm, lemme see... RT-11, RSTS, RSX, IAS, Mumps, I think "DOS" was still on the price list, I think there was a version of UNIX (Ultrix-11?), perhaps MicroPower/Pascal is an operating system. In the VMS world, however, there are justifications other than chauvinism for forgetting that VMS and VAX are NOT synonymous. When the VAX was introduced, part of the product concept was that the there WOULD be only one operating system and that VAX and VMS WOULD be synonymous. And that was true for quite some time. The addition of Ultrix and VAXELN is fairly recent. Certainly Digital's resistance to the RT-32 concept is based on the idea that VAX and VMS damn well OUGHT to be synonymous. Personally, I happen to believe that hardware and operating-system software SHOULD be designed together and supplied by one vendor as part of a closely integrated, coherent whole; the operating system is part of the computer, not a mix'n'match modular tack-on. (The UNIX viewpoint presumably is that the operating system is too important to be left to the hardware vendors, that the hardware is a RELATIVELY unimportant part of the overall system, and that a coherent philosophy ACROSS systems is more important than a coherent philosophy within any one system). Someone who thinks RSX and PDP-11 are synonymous, or MS-DOS and IBM PC are synonymous, is expressing a chauvinistic viewpoint which is supported by marketplace domination. But someone who thinks VAX and VMS are synonymous MAY POSSIBLY also be expressing a philosophical stance. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Daniel P. B. Smith ARPA: smith%eri.decnet@mghccc.harvard.edu Eye Research Institute CompuServe: 74706,661 20 Staniford Street Telephone (voice): 617 742-3140 Boston, MA 02114 -------------------------------------------------------------------- "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."--Thoreau ------
jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) (12/13/87)
In article <8712111910.AA18210@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> "ERI::SMITH" <smith%eri.decnet@mghccc.harvard.edu> writes: >But someone who thinks VAX and VMS are synonymous >MAY POSSIBLY also be expressing a philosophical stance. The only thing you can do between "#ifdef vax" and its corresponding "#endif" is conclude that you are running on a big-endian machine .... -- Johan Vromans | jv@mh.nl via European backbone Multihouse N.V., Gouda, the Netherlands | uucp: ..{uunet!}mcvax!mh.nl!jv "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"