[Info-vax] "Shanghai Stock Exchange" and OpenVMS

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <ba9770e9-3ef4-4ff7-ad21-cbd65e08b25e at n2g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
> 	AEF <spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> writes:
>> On Jan 28, 11:44 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>>> In article <b9489278-4168-437b-85e5-fff095da5... at l38g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
>>>         AEF <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As I have said in the past, (and aparently at least Michael agrees) it's
>>> all a matter of opinion as I find quite the opposite.
>> OK.
>>>>                       And the ones I have usually show several versions
>>>> of the same command with the differences specified in the name of the
>>>> command via different paths. You know: path1/cp, path2/cp, etc., where
>>>> path1 and path2 may be very similar in appearance. Which one is the
>>>> one I will be running if I just specify cp? (This is intuitive?)
>>> It is to people who use Unix for a living.  And, apparently college
>>> freshman.
>> OK, it was late night when I've been posting these things. OK, it's
>> the one that's in the PATH. I'm just starting and for some reason I'm
>> just not in the Unix PATH frame of mind yet. (Maybe it's in part
>> because I hate the PATH trains!) But why the multiple versions of some
>> commands? Why the following?
>> SYNOPSIS
>>      /usr/bin/ls  [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@] [file]...
>>      /usr/xpg4/bin/ls  [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@]
>>      [file]...
>>      /usr/xpg6/bin/ls  [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@]
>>      [file]...
>> Why three versions?
> 
> My guess would be backwarsd compatability.  We already determined you
> use Solaris.  If you knew anything at all about Sun you would knoe that
> they have made major changes in their OS.  SunOS was strictly BSD based
> with a few SYSVisms provided.  Then came Solaris.  Totally SYSV.  But,
> Sun kept a number of BSDish utilities and commands around so as to not
> break totally break scripts that people had already on their systems.
> I have no idea what "xpg" is so I can't tell you what this particular
> set does.
> 
>>>> Someone at work showed me a website which reformmated the man pages
>>>> into something much easier to read. Can't be just me who finds the
>>>> original man pages visually difficult to read.
>>>> Also, I find English words much more intuitive and actually mostly, if
>>>> not partly, self explanatory.
>>> Once again, matter of opinion. And really rather Anglo-centric, don't
>>> you think?  So, then, how useful was VMS in Germany or France?
>> How useful is the term "awk" in any language! 
> 
> Yeahy, well 'awk" is kind of an exception.  And given the stature of the
> people involved, they should be allowed some idiosyncracies.  The letters
> in "awk" are the initials of its creators Aho, Weinberger & Kernighan.
> 
>>                                               At least VMS words are
>> somewhat self-evident in one language! In what language are cp, rm,
>> mkdir, awk, sed, mv and such just normal words? 
> 
> With the exception of awk, as explained above, all of them.  Or are you
> one of those people who can't read vanity license plates either?  Every
> one of them is an abbreviation.  Do you know what PA, MD, VA, DC, etc.
> all mean?  How about lb., oz., amp.?  And just as further justification
> for even "awk", just what exactly did the word "ohm" have to do with
> resistance?
> 
>>                                                  So by your criterion,
>> Unix isn't useful in any language!
> 
> As I have said earlier.  The biggest problem with trying to explain
> anything about Unix in this neighborhood is trying to get by the
> anti-Unix bias.  Thus my recent comment about a Babbage quote.  But
> then, Babbage didn't use VMS so maybe nobody here has ever seen the
> quote I am refering to.  :-)
> 
>>>>                               I don't find that to be the case for 1-
>>>> and 2-letter commands and options. VMS commands and qualifiers and
>>>> keywords and such are mostly self-evident as to what they more or less
>>>> do or specify, aside from the fine details.
>>> Nothing about computers is "self-evident".  It's a business with its own
>>> jargon and terminology.  I mean, why do those doctors use words like
>>> "apendicitis" and "carcinoma"?  Why don't they just use English like
>>> everyone else?
>> To keep us in the dark. You see, the doctors take a special course to
>> write illegibly and the pharmacists take the corresponding course to
>> decode it! 
> 
> Ah yes, another urban legend.  Actually, most doctors I know have much
> better handwritting than I have and the reason ordinary people coldn't
> read what the doctor wrote was because it was in Latin.  I have no
> problem reading doctors notes.  especially as they move more and more
> to english anyway.
> 
>>            Actually, there is a real need for such strange words as
>> normal English words simply don't suffice for all the numerous medical
>> terms needed. The same isn't true for CLI commands. We're not talking
>> organic chemistry or here.
> 
> No, we are talking inertia.  If you truly feel that a new shell that uses
> pure english words is needed, bey all means, feel free to write one.  But
> don't be too disappointed when it becomes about as popular as the X-windows
> Window Manager that mimiced Windows98.  :-)
> 
>>>> VMS terms are like those in photography: What does the enlarger do? It
>>>> enlarges (the image)! What does the developer do? It develops film or
>>>> photographic paper. What does the focusing knob do? What does the stop
>>>> bath do? It stops the developer from developing. The fixer bath
>>>> "fixes" the film or print so that you can turn on the light without
>>>> destroying the image. And then there's the print washer and the print
>>>> dryer. Can you guess what they do?
>>> And let's not forget the F-stop!  :-)  yeah, that's real self-evident.
>> Yep. Touche'.
>>>>                                     Now suppose they were instead named
>>>> by Unix type abbreviations. You'd have no or little idea what any of
>>>> them are or do without looking them up.
>>> And if I were a professional photographer, I would have done that in the
>>> process of becoming a professional photographer.  What's your point?
>> I'm not really sure. I think we've gotten to the point where none of
>> us actually know just what we're arguing over. In this instance I was
>> trying to show through photography what it's like in another context
>> to learn new terms if said terms are described in "English words" as
>> VMS is. As I said, not all photography terms are self-evident, and
>> some are only partly self-evident.
> 
> And to a practitioner of the art, Unix commands are also perfectly clear.
> 
>>>>                                          Now, admittedly, the existing
>>>> photographic terms aren't fully self-explanatory, but at least you get
>>>> a pretty good idea of what they do (well, to varying degrees). OK,
>>>> "lens" isn't self-explanatory at all; you have to learn that one! And
>>>> "focusing" may be a challenge for some.
>>>> Well, I'd think the photographic terms, as they currently exist, are
>>>> more intuitive, right?
>>> Those of us who are not into photography would tend to disagree.  :-)
>>> I have a number of cameras.  I used to develop my own pictures and
>>> even used a lot of experimental high-speed film back inthe old days.
>>> (I did a lot of sport photography.)  But I have never been as interested
>>> in it as, say, my brother.  As a result, most of my cameras now languish
>>> on the shelf while I do what photo taking I do with a $100 Kodak digital
>>> I got on sale at the PX.
>> OK, whatever.
>>>> The file systems are another story. I haven't learned how you can have
>>>> different disks in the same single file system. As a user I suppose
>>>> that's fine, but in VMS the system manager can set up logical names to
>>>> reference directories so that the user (or even the programmer in many
>>>> cases) need not be concerned with what the underlying device is.
>>>> Being intuitive is not the end-all be-all. What can you do with the OS
>>>> is also important. Of course we _were_ discussing looking stuff up,
>>>> but you referred to "progress", which opens up a whole new can of
>>>> worms.
>>> Yeah, Unix is still "progressing" and VMS is languishing in the a corner
>>> somewhere waiting for HP to finally pull the plug on the life support
>>> system.
>>>
>>>> Some things in Unix I find very cool, like using output of one program
>>>> as input for another. But VMS has some very cool things, too.
>>>>> And, since you mentioned physics labs a few posts ago:
>>>>> in these facilities one usually has a local primer
>>>>> for newbies. Anyway one will need only a very small
>>>>> subset of an OSs capabilities to do physics work.
>>>> It's only reasonable anywhere a user starts work to have a local
>>>> source of how to get started, be it a tutorial session; a newbie
>>>> manual, "local guide" (Latex style name), a primer, or whatever you
>>>> want to call it; or something else. And that's true more generally:
>>> We used to do that, but found it unnecessary more than a decade ago.
> 
> 
>> Need specifics here. Do users not have to be given usernames and
>> passwords, for example? 
> 
> Sure, but we certainly don't need a book to tell them what it is, :-)
> Professor stands up ion the front of the first class and tell them.
> Used to have to hand out little slips of paper, but usernames are
> now intuitive and common across all campus comouting resources so it
> got easier.
> 
>>                         Users who have never used Unix before somehow
>> become instantly productive on day 1? 
> 
> Pretty much.  They use the resources on the system to learn what
> they need to know.  Anything special (like how to invoke the Prolog
> compiler) is given to them by their professors.   It's not like none
> of them have ever seen a computer before.
> 
>>                                       I suppose these users could also
>> do brain surgery on day 1 without having gone through medical school.
>> Just look it up what you need with Google!
> 
> Yet another typically absurd comparison.  That's like saying they can't
> drive cars because they don't know how to program the on board computer.
> Different things require different levels of knowledge.  Being a simple
> user requires very limited knowledge.  By the time they are seniors, they
> know how the kernel and the filesystem really work.  They don't need that
> knowledge to edit "hello.c".
> 
>>>> When you start a job, someone shows you around, right? And show's you
>>>> the ropes, so to speak, right? And what you're expected to do, right?
>>> Not anytime lately.  I am a professional and when I am hired it is
>>> expected that I will walk up to my desk and begin functioning right
>>> away.  That's what separates the professional from the intern.
>> Sorry, bad term: "the ropes". I meant that you are told which desk is
>> yours, what your phone number is, where to get your badge, what your
>> responsibilities are, what software is running on what, what your
>> usernames and passwords are, whom you report to, etc. I suppose you
>> show up on day 1 with this all telepathically absorbed or you Google
>> it.
> 
> Not the same level of knowledge as how to edit a file in Unix.  At no
> job I have ever had has someone ever sat me dowm and said, "Here is how
> you log into the system."  I have recently been given access to yet another
> pair of systems.  I received my Usernames and Passwords in separate emails.
> And that was all. It is considered my responsibility to locate the systems
> and log into them and, use them.  I don't even know what kind of system
> they are or what OS they are running.  Because of my level of experience,
> it is expected that I will be able to do my job. 
> 
>> Again, apologies for using the wrong term. I was thinking more
>> generally.
>>> I have been doing this professionally for over 30 years.  I have had
>>> to learn new langauages, new OSes and new architectures.  No one has
>>> ever offered to hold my hand.  I have been given tasks and, as a
>> That's what I should have said instead of "showing you the ropes"
>> which, come to think of it, isn't totally inappropriate. "The ropes",
>> besides just being given some tasks (which I would think would have to
>> include particulars of your new work environment that you almost
>> certainly wouldn't know ahead of time), could be a description of how
>> things work at your new workplace.
> 
> Places i have worked have, based on the claims on my resume, always
> assumed I could be pointed at a desk and I would get to work.  I have
> never been asked, "Can you do X or should we give that task to someone
> else?"  I have been handed tasks involving programming languages I have
> never used with the expectation that I will acquire the knowledge needed
> to do the job.  That is precisely how and why I learned Pascal.
> 
>>                                      When I started work at a particular
>> non-profit organization in the 90s, "customers" and employees had to
>> fill in forms and they had people type in this form data on a machine
>> similar to a keypunch, but it uploaded the data to an IBM machine, on
>> which we ran some secret commands dictated to me by a guy who looked
>> and talked like Elmer Fudd, then copied the massaged data to a 9-track
>> tape, loaded that tape on a tape drive hooked up to a pdp11/70 (of
>> which we had four for various purposes), which from there was
>> Permitted to a VAXcluster, which then ran through some third-party,
>> possibly home-grown app, and then finally something was printed on the
>> old green-bar paper which would never fold properly on its own. And
>> then there was the secret box buried God knows where in the cabs on
>> which you had to use some really strange incantation of commands and
>> various knob settings for different modes (all of which were cryptic)
>> to broadcast to the users that things were down and intentionally
>> write that the machine was expected to be up in an hour (we put down
>> an absolute time, not "1 hour"), when we in fact knew that it would be
>> several hours at best. So we had to update it every hour. I asked my
>> supervisor if we could just be honest about it say "sometime later
>> today" but he said no, we have to do it this way.
>> Now you are going to show up to work day 1 and somehow already know
>> all this? 
> 
> Sorry, i diodn't see anything odd about that envirnment.  :-)  Actually,
> if this was a real job, I would likely have left the interview with a
> "Thank you, but no thank you."
> 
>>            You're going to waste "precious company time" trying to
>> learn this on your own? Are you going to pour through manuals we
>> didn't have (well, maybe we did) 
> 
> You mean like VMS here, when I first started?  There were manuals, but
> not any place a regular user could get at them.
> 
>>                                  about an IBM OS from the distant past
>> with disk drives taller than most people just to figure out what the
>> three or four secret commands you need are instead of letting Elmer
>> Fudd simply tell you? You're going to find that secret, tiny box and
>> the correct keyboard (or whatever it was) on your own while employees
>> are left in the dark as to when the system will be back up. (Which, as
>> you just read, was the case anyway! But at least they got _some_
>> message.)
> 
> No, I'm not.  Professionalism works both ways.  I doubt very seriously
> that place was paying enough to work for them in a hokey operation like
> that.
> 
>> It's things like this and which desk is yours and all that other stuff
>> above that I meant by "showing you the ropes". I didn't mean that you
>> become a Unix apprentice. I meant that you are shown the particulars
>> of your new work environment. Again, I apologize for having used the
>> misleading term.
> 
> When I started with Martin Marietta, they used PROFS on an IBM mainframe
> for all their in-house communications.  I was not asked if I knew how to
> use MVS or PROFS.  I was given an account and told, "This is what we use."
> In 1979 I had my first formal programming education.  It was COBOL on 
> VM-370 running DOS/E.  I left the school on the Friday before Labor Day
> weekend of 1979.  I reported into my new job on the following Tuesday.
> I was put to work doing COBOL and Fortran on a Univac-11 running Exec-8.
> Trust me, there is no similarity between these two systems.  :-)  I was
> not sent off to school.  I was not given a batch of manuals.  And, there
> was no Web.  I was expected to get myself up to speed and become productive.
> The alternative would have been to be sent of to some other location which
> might not have been as nice as this one was.  When I first came here, to
> the University, I came into the reation of a one man shop.  There was
> no one to "show me the ropes".  If you have someone holding your hand
> for the first couple weeks every place you have ever worked, you have
> worked in places quite different from mine.
> 
> And when I take my next job, I expect they will have determined from the
> interview that when I get there i will "hit the ground running".  Otherwise,
> why would they hire me?
> 
> bill
> 

A few years ago, I took a consulting job from a company that wanted to 
know if they could get rid of VMS.  The answer was no and I was able to 
demonstrate WHY.  They were selling electronics to the U.S. Government 
and had committed to support their stuff for many years.  They used VMS 
systems for their design work.  They had stored all their drawings, 
parts lists, instruction manuals, etc, etc, on their VMS systems and/or 
VMS backup tapes.

Just FINDING all this crap and converting it to System-X readable form 
would have cost them more than it would to maintain a VMS system for the 
next twenty or thirty years!

At the end of the week, when I presented my final report, somebody in 
the meeting said "How did he find out so much?!!!"  It's all in knowing 
what questions to ask and finding the right people to answer them!  It 
also helps to have a script that will inventory the hardware, software, 
the DECnet database, etc.

I was able to point out that there were VMS systems cheaper to maintain 
and operate than the dinosaur they were using; SDI disks in 1998 if you 
can believe it!  I don't know what they finally decided to do.