Aucbvax.5915

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)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <[email protected]>
of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.