[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[ChrisQ]

Bob Eager wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:39:05 -0700, urbancamo wrote:
> 
>> Listen, I sit firmly on the fence between Unix and VMS and love both for
>> different reasons, but DCL is much more readable that sh/bash/bat any
>> day of the week.
> 
> Same here. I use both.
> 
> I've been shell programming for 33 years, and I still don't like it (it's 
> just got more complicated). I write most of my 'UNIX' scripts in REXX!
> 
> 

I became reasonably competent in dcl in the days when I used vms, but 
the big problem was that it was not portable. Software development of 
any kind is labour intensive and expensive. One of the major advantages 
of the unix family is portability. I can take just about any app or 
shell script from one flavour to another and have a fair degree of 
confidence that it will compile and run with not much change. I suspect 
that this is also the reason why open source has become the driving 
force that it is now.

It's not all bad news though - I understand that vms has recently had a 
big win recently for the uk national health service. That could be a lot 
of business :-)...

Regards,

Chris