Re: An Old Market in which Ada May Play

[Olivier Devuns <devuns@aonix.nospam.fr>]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> Well, if I said "I just ported my code from VMS to VMS!" would you be very
> impressed? But somehow saying "I ported from Unix(Sun) to Unix(HP)!" is
> cause to celebrate? That's the problem that exists in the Unix-like world
> because of the multiple flavors of it. The same (almost) problem exists
> porting between different versions of Windows - but at least there the whole
> thing is under one roof. OTOH, I never had any trouble taking my code from
> VMS(VAX) to VMS(Alpha) or porting it upward in version numbers. Whatever
> troubles may have come up were so trivial as to hardly be noticed and
> certainly not something to brag about.

All I can say is that porting from Solaris to HP-UX is nothing to brag about
in my line of work.
Processor- and ABI- related issues are a different beast, which must be
handled with care. No OS I've seen yet could handle those tricky issues in a
really portable fashion !

> Ahhhhh.... If only DEC had made VMS available to the general public! (Oh,
> but then, it probably would have ended up in just as bad a shape as Unix is
> now...)

Well, first of all I doubt Ol'Ken Olsen ever recognized "the general public"
as a factor in the great scheme of things.
Regarding the shape of Unix now I think we're better off with Linux, FreeBSD
etc, than with VMS in the oh-so-wise hands of Compaq.
Your mileage may vary.

-- 
Olivier Devuns                         | Aonix: http://www.aonix.com