[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[johnson.eric at gmail.com]

On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 10:18:13 PM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Wishful thinking.  The machines used in University level courses do
> not jump around from one OS to another at the whim of some professor.
> I had boxes running Windows, boxes running Linux, boxes running BSD
> and sometimes boxes running more obscure OSes for special projects.
> They aren't interested in comparing anything to VMS because there is
> no one left who knows what VMS is.  There are no textbooks that even
> mention it.

I share Bill's general thoughts on the topic.

I'm probably one of the youngest contributors here. I graduated 25 years
ago and had never touched or even heard of VMS. Even then - and this
is 25 years ago! - it was an odd duck. The only thing odder and older than
VMS (to my young eyes) was IBM's MVS and the 3270 terminal.

Again to my eyes then and now - it's simply an old man's OS. A curiosity
at best. A time when data center operators wore shirts and ties like what
I would see in old black and white photos.

It would be like expecting the car shop kids to want to learn about steam
powered cars. Uhm, yeah sure, for an afternoon I guess, but meanwhile
there is a ton of other _modern_ and _relevant_ things that everyone
has to learn. The computational world is huge and spending one's most
precious resource - your time - on something like this just doesn't
have any payout.

Unfortunately, VMS has nothing distinctive to offer to the modern 
student that can't be learned easier and faster elsewhere.


EJ