[Info-vax] Current VMS engineering quality, was: Re: What's VMS up to these days?

[John Wallace]

On Mar 6, 2:35 pm, David Froble <da... at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Simon Clubley wrote:
> > On 2012-03-05, David Froble <da... at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >> Simon Clubley wrote:
>
> >>> PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
> >>> theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach when
> >>> possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
> >>> the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.
> >> Not really fair, as the software development group that DEC at one time
> >> had can arguably be claimed to have been the best ever, and that no other
> >> group has ever come close since then.
>
> >> But, what do I know ....
>
> > Why is that not a fair comparison ?
>
> > People invested in the DEC world (from the massive sites to the small
> > sites I am used to) simply because it was the best quality option
> > available at the time.
>
> > If HP want to replace all the talented people with their own teams, the
> > replacements _are_ going to be judged to those same standards, instead of
> > the standards present in lower quality parts of the computing world.
>
> > Simon.
>
> Back in the 1970s, 1980s, and a bit into the 1990s computer hardware was not cheap.  Did
> the actual hardware really cost so much.  My take on this is that a lot of that money went
> toward significant software and support expenditures.  With significant funding, it's
> possible to have software R&D, and a good support organization.  That's what DEC had, and
> probably IBM also.  Both companies developed multiple operating systems, compilers, and
> other software.
>
> Why did Unix become so popular?  Because the "me too" computer manufacturers didn't have
> to develop it.  If they had to develop their own software portfolio, they'd never have
> been able to afford it.
>
> Why did Microsoft take over the software world?  Because all the PCs and such needed
> software.  The companies building the computers could never have afforded to develop their
> own software.
>
> DEC software development listened to their customers, and delivered what was asked for,
> but standards were maintained at a high level.  Similar to their hardware.  That's why I'm
> running VMS V7.2 on a VAXstation 4000 model 90A.  Anybody still running DOS on early 1990s
> hardware?
>
> The big mistake was DEC thinking that they could carve out a large customer base, keep it,
> and milk it for large sums of money.  Remember the BI bus?  What DEC should have done was
> license their software to anyone who wanted to use it.  If they would have done that, it
> would be in the best interest of DEC's competitors to insure DEC remained viable.  But I
> digress ....
>
> I just don't think that any computer company will ever again be able to afford the sizable
> investment for software and support that DEC (and probably IBM) spent in the past.  And
> even if they could, they won't in this day of "only the next quarter matters" management.
>
> Which is why I wrote that it's not a fair comparison.  There most likely will never again
> in private enterprise be the funding to hire, train, and keep such a large and excellent
> group of software and support people.

BI didn't work out well, but there weren't comparable "industry
standard" buses around. Not too long after that, DEC put a lot of time
and money into the industry standard Futurebus+ (DEC 4000, DEC 7000,
and DEC 10000 Alpha systems could all do FB+) but you won't have heard
of it. Then there was TURBOchannel, a DEC design for a simple fast IO
bus (found in the DEC 3000 series) with basically no licencing
restrictions. And then shortly after that came PCI, with DEC quite
happily jumping on the bandwagon.

"There most likely will never again in private enterprise be the
funding to hire, train, and keep such a large and excellent group of
software and support people."

Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
and/or bean-counting IT people. Decent technologists still have an
understanding of the difference between price and value. IT
departments mostly lost that understanding over a decade ago.