[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[John Reagan]

"Neil Rieck" <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> wrote in message 
news:78797018-2cfb-402d-9eb9-b1f109c76092 at p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
> Since any idiot can put up a web page these days, you know it all
> can't be true. So imagine my surprise when I bumped into this:
>
> http://radsoft.net/rants/20040831,00.shtml
>
> <quote>Dave always wanted to rewrite VMS in C. He hated Unix but loved
> C. As soon as he'd finished VMS he suggested the rewrite. He was
> turned down flat. Several years later he found himself in Seattle and
> essentially was doing the rewrite in C when word came DEC were tired
> of him.</quote>
>
> This article contains lots of other (possibly) questionable facts, but
> think about the statement above "rewrite VMS in C". If this had
> happened, we would have VMS or OpenVMS on any platform including
> x86-64
>
> NSR

I don't believe a word of it.  VAXELN wasn't written in C, but EPASCAL. 
PRISM was going to have its own implementation language (a Don MacClaren 
invention) that was going to be a mixture of Pascal, a dash of PL/I, and 
some new language features.  I have one of the numbered preliminary language 
manuals stuffed in a box.

John