Ah, but Denys...  Recall the nature of the operating systems which were
available in the beginning, and see where they have gone (and yes, are
still going in some cases).  Look farther at the number of people required
to keep these things going!
Certainly, there are richer, new technologies and systems, but how many of
them have the flexibility and durability of our 'problem child'?  An
intense mix of OLTP and Batch processing?  Oops... Please choose one or the
other.  A vastly underrated 4GL which ran circles around the competition
(ok, so I may be totally nuts, but I loved writing Transact code.  And the
applications just screamed).  I won't even touch on Image/SQL, since I
cannot be dispassionate about it.  What may have been missing in MPE itself
was well-fleshed-out by the supporting developers - all building on the
foundation, rather than tripping over each other because they weren't
afraid to communicate and adapt.
It's that community which I fail to see in other environments.  Yes, it's
been a long time since HP staff were an active part of that family, with
painfully few exceptions.  I do miss the sense of pulling together as a
team - HP, 3rd party vendors, and customers working in concert to assure
success.
I look around at the conflicts and suspicion and double-talk that permeate
this new world.  Frankly, I'm looking forward to no longer having to
contend with it professionally.  You and I go back too many years for
either of us to pretend not to remember, and possibly wonder how little we
appear to have learned, or retained, about teamwork in this industry.

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