Glenn wrote a lot of excellent and valid points (IMO).

> (...) MPE is
>perceived as an antiquated proprietary OS built on 25 year old
>technology.   In reality, it is proprietary, but it is built on 10 year
>old technology (PA-RISC). (...)

I'd phrase this as "built on 10 year old PA-RISC technology with 25+
years of evolution" to include the pre-RISC MPE/V "classic" history,
which has not been thrown away when MPE moved to the RISC platform.


> (...) Programs written for the original HP 3000 (way back in the
>early 70's) can still run on the latest and greatest 3000 - with nary a
>fix required (not even a recompile!).

This reminds me of the days when I had to do with MicroFocus Cobol/UX.
At that time (no idea how it works today) it was not quite unusual to
be forced -ahem- recommended to recompile from source after installing
patches or new versions (which came with new UX releases as well as in
between them).


> The MPE operating system is extremely easy to use and learn.
> (...) no cryptographic commands to remember.

Unless you plunge into the Posix Shell ;-) but you are not neccesarily
forced to do this, if you don't like to (but might want to for taking
advantage of various Posix based tools or applications).

And in case you're inside the Posix Shell on MPE and don't like it any
more, you can type "exit" to return to the friendly MPE prompt. Try the
same on Unix and see where it takes you ;-) ;-) ;-)


>5.  The 3000 has one of the most versatile language options available.

Glenn forgot to mention the Java (supported) or Perl (freeware) options.


Just my EUR 0.02 from Germany :-)

Lars

(only speaking for lappel here, not for grc.hp.com)