Date   : Thu, 30 Jun 1983 23:10:08 EDT (Thu)
From   : Rick Conn <rconn@brl>
Subject: Re: CP/M vs. Unix

In all of these recent discussions,  I  feel  that  an  important
point  is being missed.  I fully agree that CP/M, UNIX, VMS, ITS,
etc, are different "breeds of cat," and I don't think that anyone
would  question  this.   In  the  world  in  which I find myself,
however, I have access, in one form or another, to ALL  of  these
breeds of cat, and I find that I am constantly comparing them.

The comparison is not from the point  of  view  of  the  internal
operation  of  the system, but from the point of view of a tool I
can use to run an application.  Attributes  such  as  quality  of
tools,  speed  of  tools,  availability of system, reliability of
system, ease of use of tools, familiarity with tools, and quality
and  availability  of  documentation are considered when I make a
selection.

As a user, I find that the fact that TENEX is a  multitasking  OS
with  a  signficant  degree  of power to be inconsequential in my
decision- making process.  The  fact  that  the  TENEX  system  I
access  is  often  heavily-loaded when I need it and that it runs
very slowly, causing me to expend significantly more time than if
I  used  the  UNIX system I access causes me to stay away from it
for the most part.  With these attributes in mind, of all of  the
systems  I  access,  my  personal  ZCPR2  system  comes closer to
filling the requirements than the others.  I  am  even  into  the
mode these days of programming in FORTRAN-77 using the WordMaster
and WordStar editors under ZCPR2 and then uploading the result to
VAX/VMS  for compilation and testing.  Minor problems, of course,
are corrected using EDT on the VAX,  and  the  final  version  is
downloaded to ZCPR2 for further work and backup.

So, I would like to say that it DOES make sense to compare  these
widely  different  operating  systems, especially if the basis of
comparison is the user interface  and  the  attributes  I  listed
above.   People will soon be finding that they have an increasing
number of choices like this to make.  As a plug,  for  my  money,
ZCPR2  and  UNIX (depending on application) are the winners, with
VAX/VMS running second.  Of course, the machines they are running
on make a difference in this choice.

        Rick