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

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <dcc19519-d252-4324-a3e3-fde4c3505ad3 at s15g2000yqs.googlegroups.com>, Neil Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes:
>On Nov 8, 8:39=A0am, Arne Vajh=F8j <a... at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> Neil Rieck wrote:
>> > On Nov 7, 9:27 pm, Arne Vajh=F8j <a... at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> >> Neil Rieck wrote:
>> >>> 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 love=
>d
>> >>> 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, bu=
>t
>> >>> 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
>> >> If the various owners of VMS had believed in the market for
>> >> VMS/x86-64, then I don't think getting Bliss and Macro-32 for
>> >> x86-64 would have been the showstopper. My guess is that it
>> >> would have been a small part of the overall project. Porting
>> >> an OS to a new platform is more than just building the
>> >> source code.
>>
>> > True, but if Cutler wanted to immediately write VMS in C then I'm
>> > thinking he must had a good reason for it. We all know that UNIX
>> > enjoyed an immediate debugging when it was first rewritten from
>> > assembler to "C". I wonder (in hindsight) if all these secondary and
>> > tertiary components (like BLISS and MACRO) might be an indication of
>> > too many chefs in the VMS kitchen :-)
>>
>> Today OS in C may be the standard.
>>
>> But back in the mid 70's where the VMS decision were made, then
>> it was not the standard.
>>
>> And my understanding is that VMS inherited this from
>> the PDP-11 OS's.
>>
>> And when it was decided for them, then C was not available
>> (at least according to many C was invented to port Unix
>> to PDP-11).
>>
>> Arne
>
>As I have mentioned to others privately, if DEC would have listened to
>Cutler and rewritten VMS in C, then porting VMS to Alpha, Itanium and
>anything else would already have saved them tons of money.

Keep it in Bliss and write a compiler for the target architecture,
if you believe it is that simple, would be the better solution.

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VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

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