Hi Nathan, I believe the issue was not whether Windows is exact replica of VMS, but whether there are grounds to believe Windows is substantially inferior to VMS.
On specific aspects you mentioned, it is certainly not. Windows does have help systems superior to that of VMS Help: hypertext based, with TOC, navigation, search, context help, tooltips etc. Absence of RMS equivalent in any modern operating system is an advantage compared to VMS. It was a doubtful idea to build the database into the kernel in the first place, and to impose file data structuring on the applications. May be it was an interesting experiment for its time, and in homogenous environment, but it was a failed one. Rdb was an explicit admission of this failure, obvious admission anyway: database layer does not belong to the standard part of the executive, it belongs either to a server process (replaceable, customizable and remote-able) or (for personal databases) in the library. Another aspect of RMS -- imposing structuring on files -- is the bane to anyone attempting to use VMS in heterogeneous environments. Long-term, it were bad ideas to use structured (non-stream) text files, and also to fork file contents in to two segments (data and attributes that are required for the interpretation of data structure), one of which is hidden and gets lost when trying to transfer the file across heterogeneous environment. As for scripting, Windows does offer a variety scripting languages (both Microsoft supported and open-source standards), and many of Windows components are exposed for management either as callable COM/DCOM objects or via WMI/WBEM or through the registry. Admittedly, scripting capabilities came somewhat late. However this is just the reflection of the fact that Windows was developed and targeted as an operating system for desktop market first, where GUI-level management interface certainly had to take a priority; managing via scripting had to be a second priority. Nevertheless it had been available for many years now. Now, I am not quite sure about the "modality" of complaints about Windows vs. VMS. If they are an expression of just purely personal preferences, unrelated to any objective comparative merits, akin to acquired taste (e.g. based on vested effort, attachment to acquired knowledge, emotional nostalgia etc.), than this of course is not a debatable subject. However what I do not see is any objectively justifiable grounds for such complaints. (At least on a significant scale, generally of course it may be possible to find corner cases that are implemented better in this system or in that.) > There is one area where Windows has VMS beat, though: eye-candy. It would be more to the point to rephrase it as usability and productivity. > there's also the 'minor detail' that VMS was never ported to the x86 platform. Such porting would not have changed the fate of VMS very much. Windows won desktop space because it provided expanding continuity of massive desktop application base on the expanding continuity of deployed desktop hardware. Or to put it in other way, because it swam with the strong current of market collapsing to standardization rather than against it. VMS stood no more chances for desktop than, some years earlier, DEC non-x86 PCs with no software applications for them, at the time when market already collapsed to standardization on IBM PC compatibles with thriving software development ecosystem (Gordon Bell in his memories is quite acidic about this situation). Taking over the desktop meant also taking over the large part of software development resources. Therefore if VMS x86 port were available, VMS could have fared better in server space than it did, but it would have been undercut by the shortage of 3rd party development support anyway. _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
