[Simh] OT - Windows - Re: Alpha simulator performance

[Nathan Cutler]

>> As a side note, I personally was never quite able to understand the
>> reasoning of people who extoll VMS and simultaneously "bleah" about "Windoze",
>> which after all at its foundations is to a significant extent a clean and neat
>> reimplementation of  VMS/Mica architecture at a new technological volution.
>
> The reasoning is simply that not all of the problems with Microsoft and
> Windows are *technical*.

Indeed. Approaching it as I do from the vantage point of a
user/administrator/database programmer, and not a systems programmer,
its hard to imagine a vaster difference in experience and philosophy
than between VMS and Microsoft Windows!

The two systems may have similar internals, but they don't betray that
at first glance, or even years of serious use. I've looked hard in
Windows, but never found a VMS-style help system, DCL, RMS, etc. etc.
etc. or anything resembling them. I did find a dollar prompt, but
compared to DCL it's a joke, and it's remained a practically
unchanged, pitiful excuse for a shell for the past 20 years.

There is one area where Windows has VMS beat, though: eye-candy. And
that, apparently, is the strength on which everyone justified adopting
it. Of course, there's also the 'minor detail' that VMS was never
ported to the x86 platform.