[comp.os.vms] Are VMS and VAX synonymous

rrk@byuvax.bitnet (12/05/87)

It is obvious that VMS is the operating system of the VAX just as DOS isthe
operating system of the PC.  Sure, they both run UNIX. But I'd like
to see a UNIX cluster, not that one couldn't be created with some copying of
basic operating system concepts from VMS, just as has been done in many
other cases for Ultrix and which we have been promised more of in the future.

And is Fortran the language of VMS?  That's a similar question.  No language
exists totally without influence from the other languages around it.  You
might say that everyone initially borrowed from Fortran or Cobol, but now
it only serves for compatibility.  Standard fortran is missing lots of things
that it hasn't gotten around to borrowing from more advanced languages.
Thanks partially to the primativeness of this standard Fortran, and the
beauty of VAX assembly, the average length of a program, except
for expression evaluation, may well be shorter in MACRO32.  MACRO32 is the
only language found on all VMS VAX's.  Certainly Universities will cling
to Fortran.  It was there when the professors went to school.  I have never
been at a non-university site that had fortran.  But nearly all the
non-university sites I've been at have VAX C.  I learned Fortran in school
15 years ago, when it was a standard.  But I abandoned it long before the
VAX hit the scene.  The only people I know who tolerate fortran are Engineering
students.  I've worked on 15 VAX CPU's in the past 7 years.  The only one
with Fortran was the only University I worked at.

Fortran  and Cobol are a little like Latin and French.  They are both very
established in certain environments, but I would never classify either one as
being "The Language".

rob@philabs.Philips.Com (Rob Robertson) (12/07/87)

In article <5214@zen.berkeley.edu> sarge@scam.berkeley.edu (Steven Brian McKechnie Sargent) writes:
>
>Presumably in comp.os.vms, we can identify "VAX" with "VMS" without confusion.
>UNIX ideologues aside, the real business of VAXes is running VMS.  Ken Olson
>can tell you that...

ken olson is also quoted at saying that "VMS is a much more
complicated operating system than unix."*  therefore  vms is a much
better OS than unix.

believe it or not.

rob

---------------------------------
* quoted in digital review many moons ago.

u3369429@murdu.OZ (Michael Bednarek) (12/10/87)

In article <39rrk@byuvax.bitnet> rrk@byuvax.bitnet writes:
>It is obvious that VMS is the operating system of the VAX just as DOS isthe
>operating system of the PC.
> [...]
>And is Fortran the language of VMS? [...]
>                                                            MACRO32 is the
>only language found on all VMS VAX's.  Certainly Universities will cling
>to Fortran.  It was there when the professors went to school.  I have never
>been at a non-university site that had fortran.
> [...]
>Fortran  and Cobol are a little like Latin and French.  They are both very
>established in certain environments, but I would never classify either one as
>being "The Language".


Hmm, I've never worked in a shop without Fortran (5 jobs in the last 18 years,
4 Market Research Institutes, 1 University).

Some quotes from "Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL" by Ed Post:

         The easiest way to tell  a  Real  Programmer  from  the
    crowd  is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real
    Programmers use FORTRAN.  Quiche Eaters use PASCAL.

    *    Real Programmers do List Processing in FORTRAN.
    *    Real Programmers do String Manipulation in FORTRAN.
    *    Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it  at  all) in FORTRAN.
    *    Real Programmers do Artificial Intelligence programs in FORTRAN.

    If you can't do it in FORTRAN, do it in  assembly  language.
    If  you  can't  do  it  in assembly language, it isn't worth doing.

    Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs
    in any language.



Michael Bednarek		
Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (IAESR)
Melbourne University, Parkville 3052, AUSTRALIA, Phone : +61 3 344 5744
Domain: u3369429@{murdu.oz.au | ucsvc.dn.mu.oz.au}  or  mb@munnari.oz.au
"bang": ...UUNET.UU.NET!munnari!{murdu.oz | ucsvc.dn.mu.oz}!u3369429

"POST NO BILLS."

dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (12/11/87)

In article <39rrk@byuvax.bitnet> rrk@byuvax.bitnet writes:
     It is obvious that VMS is the operating system of the VAX just as
     DOS [is the] operating system of the PC.

Actually, DOS originally ran on early IBM systems, way back in the
sixties.  (Some people confuse between OS and DOS.  Both OS and DOS ran
on IBM systems, but they were not the same thing.  If you were running
DOS and all your disks crashed, you were left with OS.)  Later, DEC
adapted DOS to run on its PDP-11 series.  Because of sophisticated
batch facilities that were added to DOS, DEC called it DOS/BATCH.
Then, in the early eighties, a young guy called Bill Gates saw the long
heritage of DOS, and saw its potential for small systems, and used
sophisticated compression techniques to reduce its size down to a few
kilobytes, thus giving us today's modern DOS.  Also, the folks at Amiga
realized that DOS was a great thing, and adapted it for the Amiga and
called it AmigaDOS.

VMS, on the other hand, has no heritage to speak of.  A bunch of guys
in long hair and sandals were having decaffinated coffee and discussing
virtual memory one day, and one of them said, "well, if you have a LOT
of virtual memory, you can call it a system", and the rest is
geography.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi