[Info-vax] Happy new Year !

[H Vlems]

On Dec 31 2009, 9:30 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca>
wrote:
> H Vlems wrote:
> > JF, I'm afraid that the next decade will see the end of a truly great
> > Operating System.
>
> This does not worry me anymore. There could still be a miracle which
> gets HP to change its mind about VMS, but I am not waiting for it.
>
> I think the next decade will be the "moving on" decade where things
> introduced during this past decade really replace stuff. On-line
> music/movies replacing CD/DVD, VoIP replacing POTS telephone, and
> perhaps on-line entertainment replacing legacy television.
>
> We have to learn to let go of cherished things when they no longer have
> a future. People didn't have a problem letting go of Telex when fax
> replaced it.
>
> The problem these days is that it seems that the replacements are not
> better than the older stuff. Itunes music is lesser quality than CD for
> instance. And VoIP isn't as reliable as POTS.  And there are many good
> features in VMS that are not present in the products meant to replace it.

I understand that. The first computer I've ever used was a Burroughs
B6700 running the MCP
operating system. These systems were markedly different from other
systems then on the market.
There was no assembler, everything was written in ALGOL. It had
multiple cpu's and virtual memory.
There's little left of Burroughs though there are still sites that run
the software in emulation.
It didn''t matter much to change to VMS in 1983 or so. The point I'm
trying to make is that in 1983
we had a choice of operating systems. Today it's linux or windows.
Professionally the choice isn't much
wider, adding only IBM's mainframe operating systems, with the IBM
price tag, and a couple of unix
flavors. It feels like buying a car and the only choices left are Fiat
and Volkswagen (the high end brands are
owned by these two ...).
Anyway, I hope I have enough hardware to allow me access to my
favorite programming environment :-)
Happy New Year,
Hans