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Aucbvax.5915 fa.info-vax utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Fri Jan 22 13:23:34 1982 UNIX vs VMS >From decvax!duke!unc!lynn@Berkeley Fri Jan 22 13:20:08 1982

I am glad to see that some sense is coming into this discussion rather than polemics. The initial DEC market for the VAX 11/780 was scientific research groups that needed a substantial computer capacity for low cost, and had a quarter million dollars to spare. Examples are quantum chemists, crystallographers, molecular dynamicists, and similar types who do large scale FORTRAN number crunching (but not the gigascale crunching required by the nuclear weapons simulaters). These people can only afford an in-house computer if it can be run pretty much on a turnkey basis -- a research group or university chemistry department simply has a very difficult time finding money to hire systems programmers, and can't afford them if they get the personnel slot. You can hire a Ph.D. chemist to do academic research for $15,000 a year, but he is going to get unhappy if he works next to a good hacker with much less training and knowledge in chemistry (this is a chemistry department, remember?) who is earning twice as much money.

At last the point -- most of DEC's VMS customers ARE NOT INTERESTED IN COMPUTERS. They have to have them, but they don't want one that gets in the way of their research. They would much rather spend their resources on their research interests directly, not on keeping their computer fed. I am a crystallographer turned hacker, and was the entire systems staff for such a group for three years. VMS is a very good system for such people. True, they "ought" to use their computers more creatively, but they are not interested in that. They are interested in chemistry, or whatever. (That is why a Ph.D. will work for $15,000 a year and be happy.) One reason I left was frustration with their total lack of interest in the computer as anything except a numerical engine, but from their point of view they were correct -- they got five times the work done IN CRYSTALLOGRAPHY after they got the VAX and stopped trying to use the university computer center. I am now (among other things) the system manager for a computer science department with a couple of VAXen and a PDP-11 all running UNIX, and get frustrated with people's lack of interest in natural sciences.

Of course any VMS system that can get this note is probably an exception, full of hackers and doing fascinating computer science things. Otherwise they wouldn't be on the net reading remote mail in the first place, and they will all jump on me with both feet and hobnail boots. Lynn F. TenEyck University of North Carolina duke!unc!lynn (uucp only)

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