25 Sep
2017
25 Sep
'17
6:46 p.m.
> "Bah. That's just some goof-ball
research toy."
I feel like the same thing was said about Unix at some
point very early
in it's history.
Amusingly the IT department of AT&T felt that way and commissioned a
Harvard prof, no less, to write a report about why VMS was the way to
go on Vaxen. The hired gun (so much for academic integrity) addressed
the subject almost entirely with meta arguments:
(1) VMS was written by OS professionals; Unix was a lab experiment.
(2) One could count on support from DEC, not from Research. (So
much for USG; as far as i know the author never asked anyone in]
Bell Labs about anything.)
(3) And the real killer: VMS was clearly far advanced, witness
its shelf of manuals vs the thin Unix volumes that fit in one's
briefcase. Lee McMahon had particular fun with this one in a
rebuttal that unleashed the full power of his Jesuit training
in analytic debate.
Doug