[Info-vax] Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 8/23/2023 2:44 AM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <u9n69c$r61o$1 at dont-email.me>, arne at vajhoej.dk (Arne Vajhøj)
> wrote:
>> There are two very different questions:
>>
>> #1: Did DEC's decisions in 1977 make sense given 1977 knowledge?
>>
>> I believe the answer to #1 is YES. Their decisions was similar to
>> how most OS was designed at the time.
> 
> The decisions in 1977 were defensible, but not forward-looking. Operating
> systems written in high-level languages already existed, and
> microprocessor-based machines offered a possibility of computers becoming
> much cheaper. VAX/VMS solved the problems of the recent past, quite well,
> but did not anticipate the future.

It is difficult to anticipate the future.

They made some choices that looked OK at the time.

I suspect that it reflect the leadership.

the engineering approach: let us choose something
that we are 99.9% sure to work fine

the visionary approach: let us choose something
where there is 50% chance of huge success and
50% chance of total failure

Engineers are trained to build stuff that is guaranteed
to work.

The Steve Jobs and Elon Musk types takes a chance - sometimes
it works - sometimes it doesn't work.

Arne