[Info-vax] report of the last "rendez-vous autour de VMS" (2-FEB-2024)

[John Dallman]

In article <uvv2s0$392q8$7 at dont-email.me>, ldo at nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2024 20:29:11 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > But they have x86-64 servers not ARM servers.
> That seems a dubious presumption, that those still wedded to VMS 
> are not looking beyond x86, when others are.

Some others are. This is not universal, or even terribly widespread. Most
ARM Linux work happens on cloud servers, running Python and other
scripting languages, where the customer doesn't know or care about the
underlying architecture. VMS cares a lot, because it's all compiled to
native code. 

I work at a large ISV, on a site that produces software components for
sale to third parties. We are the only site, out of at least 30 in the
company, that has ARM Linux or ARM Windows running locally, or does
development for iOS, Android or ARM macOS. One or two other sites do
development for ARM Linux on AWS. Other sites have lots of iOS and
Android devices in use as personal devices, of course, and may have a few
Macs for publishing or other creative work. 

But I have to explain to central IT all the time about ARM being a
different instruction set and incompatible, and it's taken ages to get
them to stop trying to install stuff remotely on ARM Windows. Fortunately,
the installers for OS services and the like refuse to install on the
wrong architecture, but that meant the installers failed and didn't
terminate. They just sat there consuming CPU and RAM, on machines that
aren't terribly powerful to start with. 

John