4 ms·

It goes back to well before 1985. In fact, Ken Olsen explained DEC's Unix "strategy" very clearly back in 1984: "One of the questions that comes up all the ti

It goes back to well before 1985. In fact, Ken Olsen explained DEC's Unix "strategy" very clearly back in 1984: "One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there." -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 And I can, in fact, verify that what Olsen said about five-foot shelves of manuals too. And VMS was (and OpenVMS still is) an impressive operating system, some features of which the Unix/Linux ecosystem is just gaining parity with. That said, It was commodity microcomputer hardware that doomed DEC, not it's faint hearted support for Unix, IMHO.

dboreham 6y ago
We're literally _still_ fighting this battle between VMS and Unix. E.g. WSL2.
Spooky23 6y ago
He was right... Enter Windows NT.
icedchai 6y ago
One of the first multi-user systems I had access to was VMS. I'm still fond of it, and have an Alpha in my collection, running OpenVMS. And he's right. I remember working at a company that had a wall of VMS documentation. It was amazing.
- usr1106 6y ago
  The living computer museum has a VAX running the original VMS, accessible over the internet. Yeah the museum is closed, but the VAX is running, I've just logged in to verify.
  - EamonnMR 6y ago
    I hope they are able to reopen some day. Still hurts that they had to let everyone go
mtVessel 6y ago
I worked in a VAX shop early on. We had an intern who was pushing Linux on us. He said to me, "Sure, VMS is great, but the downside is you need a wall of manuals." My reply was, "Downside? That's the UPSIDE! You can get an entire wall of manuals for it!" I still feel that way.
- ScottBurson 6y ago
  Wow, what functionality did it have that took all those pages to document? Can you offer any examples of things it could do that Unix couldn't?
  - jonjacky 6y ago
    What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? (Dec 2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13205419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13205419 Old VMS programmer here. In addition to the above, the thing I remember is that there was more of everything in VMS, and it was all more complicated. Unix has files which are just strings of bytes. VMS had those, but also several (or many) other file types with records and indices kind of like a database, and a library of functions for each different file type. Unix has processes. VMS had processes and jobs -- a job is a group of processes, when you log in you start a job, all the subprocesses you start in that login session belong to that job etc. So there are functions for dealing the jobs as well as processes. Unix has environment variables. VMS had logical names which could be used in a similar way, but there was a process logical name table, a job logical name table, and a system logical name table, and functions for dealing with all of them. And on and on in this style. Whether you see this as an advantage or disadvantage depends on whether you have an application that can use some of these features, so you don't have to write them yourself as you might have to in Unix. In addition to that, as the link above explains, VMS had facilities that early Unixes just didn't have, such as clustering - you could connect several VAXes to a common shared file system and share computational load. Also there was DECNET, a complete networking stack, a parallel universe to TCP/IP (which was not so pervasive in the 1970s and 80s). Each of these contributed a couple of thick binders to that wall of documentation. The VMS manual set was delivered on a pallet! It was bigger and heavier than most of the later VAX computers.
smcameron 6y ago
Jesus Christ, having used VMS and SunOs back in the day... this is some serious delusion. From a user/programmer perspective, in my experience VMS just plain sucked compared to SunOS. Probably, this was down to the shell. The VMS shell just SUCKED.
- jjav 6y ago
  +1 to that. My first exposure to non-personal computers was via VMS at the university. It was exciting. But then a few months later I got access to a SunOS lab (and shortly after, AIX and HP-UX labs). Mind blown! Instantly in my mind VMS became just a toy, UNIX is where the hacker ethic lived for real. Thirty years later, still on UNIX (BSDs and Linux now). VMS? Yeah..
heisenbit 6y ago
The manuals were fantastic but their online help was also excellent if the manual shelf was too far away.
commandlinefan 6y ago
What could VMS do that Unix couldn't?
- jonjacky 6y ago
  See my post above.

dboreham 6y ago

We're literally _still_ fighting this battle between VMS and Unix. E.g. WSL2.

Spooky23 6y ago

He was right... Enter Windows NT.

icedchai 6y ago

One of the first multi-user systems I had access to was VMS. I'm still fond of it, and have an Alpha in my collection, running OpenVMS. And he's right. I remember working at a company that had a wall of VMS documentation. It was amazing.

usr1106 6y ago
The living computer museum has a VAX running the original VMS, accessible over the internet. Yeah the museum is closed, but the VAX is running, I've just logged in to verify.
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  I hope they are able to reopen some day. Still hurts that they had to let everyone go

mtVessel 6y ago

I worked in a VAX shop early on. We had an intern who was pushing Linux on us. He said to me, "Sure, VMS is great, but the downside is you need a wall of manuals." My reply was, "Downside? That's the UPSIDE! You can get an entire wall of manuals for it!" I still feel that way.

ScottBurson 6y ago
Wow, what functionality did it have that took all those pages to document? Can you offer any examples of things it could do that Unix couldn't?
- jonjacky 6y ago
  What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? (Dec 2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13205419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13205419 Old VMS programmer here. In addition to the above, the thing I remember is that there was more of everything in VMS, and it was all more complicated. Unix has files which are just strings of bytes. VMS had those, but also several (or many) other file types with records and indices kind of like a database, and a library of functions for each different file type. Unix has processes. VMS had processes and jobs -- a job is a group of processes, when you log in you start a job, all the subprocesses you start in that login session belong to that job etc. So there are functions for dealing the jobs as well as processes. Unix has environment variables. VMS had logical names which could be used in a similar way, but there was a process logical name table, a job logical name table, and a system logical name table, and functions for dealing with all of them. And on and on in this style. Whether you see this as an advantage or disadvantage depends on whether you have an application that can use some of these features, so you don't have to write them yourself as you might have to in Unix. In addition to that, as the link above explains, VMS had facilities that early Unixes just didn't have, such as clustering - you could connect several VAXes to a common shared file system and share computational load. Also there was DECNET, a complete networking stack, a parallel universe to TCP/IP (which was not so pervasive in the 1970s and 80s). Each of these contributed a couple of thick binders to that wall of documentation. The VMS manual set was delivered on a pallet! It was bigger and heavier than most of the later VAX computers.

smcameron 6y ago

Jesus Christ, having used VMS and SunOs back in the day... this is some serious delusion. From a user/programmer perspective, in my experience VMS just plain sucked compared to SunOS. Probably, this was down to the shell. The VMS shell just SUCKED.

jjav 6y ago
+1 to that. My first exposure to non-personal computers was via VMS at the university. It was exciting. But then a few months later I got access to a SunOS lab (and shortly after, AIX and HP-UX labs). Mind blown! Instantly in my mind VMS became just a toy, UNIX is where the hacker ethic lived for real. Thirty years later, still on UNIX (BSDs and Linux now). VMS? Yeah..

heisenbit 6y ago

The manuals were fantastic but their online help was also excellent if the manual shelf was too far away.

commandlinefan 6y ago

What could VMS do that Unix couldn't?

jonjacky 6y ago
See my post above.