Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cca!mirror!rayssd!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm!unknown
From: rrk@byuvax.bitnet
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Are VMS and VAX synonymous (Was: Re: VMS games)
Message-ID: <39rrk@byuvax.bitnet>
Date: Sat, 5-Dec-87 14:18:38 EST
Article-I.D.: byuvax.39rrk
Posted: Sat Dec  5 14:18:38 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 10:40:32 EST
Lines: 26

It is obvious that VMS is the operating system of the VAX just as DOS isthe
operating system of the PC.  Sure, they both run UNIX. But I'd like
to see a UNIX cluster, not that one couldn't be created with some copying of
basic operating system concepts from VMS, just as has been done in many
other cases for Ultrix and which we have been promised more of in the future.

And is Fortran the language of VMS?  That's a similar question.  No language
exists totally without influence from the other languages around it.  You
might say that everyone initially borrowed from Fortran or Cobol, but now
it only serves for compatibility.  Standard fortran is missing lots of things
that it hasn't gotten around to borrowing from more advanced languages.
Thanks partially to the primativeness of this standard Fortran, and the
beauty of VAX assembly, the average length of a program, except
for expression evaluation, may well be shorter in MACRO32.  MACRO32 is the
only language found on all VMS VAX's.  Certainly Universities will cling
to Fortran.  It was there when the professors went to school.  I have never
been at a non-university site that had fortran.  But nearly all the
non-university sites I've been at have VAX C.  I learned Fortran in school
15 years ago, when it was a standard.  But I abandoned it long before the
VAX hit the scene.  The only people I know who tolerate fortran are Engineering
students.  I've worked on 15 VAX CPU's in the past 7 years.  The only one
with Fortran was the only University I worked at.

Fortran  and Cobol are a little like Latin and French.  They are both very
established in certain environments, but I would never classify either one as
being "The Language".