On Fri, 26 Apr 1996 14:58:08 GMT mark landin said: >In article <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask] says... >> >I have both 9000's and >>3000's. Love them both, but we're moving away from the 3000. > >How come? Interesting question that I'm beginning to think (in spite of Proposition 3000) my positioning of the 3000 may be unique. Unix has years of public, open development, freely available software that makes the CSL look puny, and way ahead in the networking arena, not to mention generic system support such as the curses terminal I/O library (check out their supported term types) and very 'liberal' development environment. Some of this is good, but Unix also suffers from a primitive, cryptic, counter-intuitive user interface at the base level (shells, utilities, etc) and a brute-force distribution of privileges (priviledge? I hate that word :-) ) to the distinction of user versus God with no middle ground. Unix is a powerful tool in the proper hands -- countless Ph.D theses have been generated in the expansion of base Unix tools (check references for regular expressions in grep, or even deeper, pattern matching in Perl). The problem is that this is incomprehensible gibberish to a non-Unix audience; the closest analogy I can think of is a COBOL programmer looking at RPG source code, except worse. As someone stated earlier (Wirt?), Unix rules because "everybody's using it". Sure they are, Linux is free, you can get Sun Solaris for Intel PCs, and Unix vendors are waging a price war to land a market share. But it is plug-and-play nonsense fighting for the hardware market. Let's face it, if you're committed to a Unix platform, you send out bids and anything goes; few vendors have "added value" of significance to offer to justify choosing them over low bid. So you choose your "Unix box"... I wonder how many Unix sales are to NEW Unix customers (I suspect a large percentage since this factors out the long-term educational and research areas where Unix has always had a niche). It's strength is in the wide diversity of applications and utilities, many free (Internet legacy), and if you have a Unix-guru on staff to hide the management/operational overhead, you might get away with it for awhile. But the reality of Unix eventually becomes apparent... I just finished a grad course in Internet programming (HTML, perl, JAVA, and JavaScript) and the Unix components have an incredibly high learning curve. Once you gain some literacy of the language you can do incredible things; but the learning process is incredibly slow and there is no "manual" to learn from. Unix has "man" pages, yes, but they are intended for reference use and offer no practical examples of use. The MPE Posix User's Guide (not exact title, I don't have it handy) has some excellent material in it for practical use; but it isn't on the LaserROM nor widely distributed in paper format. Which brings me to my "unique" point (perhaps) that if the 3000 can run the Unix apps, we're really getting somewhere. Unix looses the "everyone else uses it" edge and the 3000 footholds take effect. Unfortunately the hot Unix apps require Oracle, Sybase, or some other RDBMS that costs an arm and a leg on the 3000 and always lags behind the competition in its feature set and availability. Still... After some practical Unix exposure (possibly after some expensive HP training classes, or whatever vendor you choose) you have to eventually face the pitfalls and complexity of Unix management and operations. As Stan noted, not only do you need more CPU, memory, and disk storage; you also need systems personnel dedicated to the welfare of the beast. Buy the O'Reiley (sp?) series of Unix books and try to align to the mindset. There was an April Fool's day joke a year or two ago where Ritchie and others confessed to the Unix "hoax" - Multics was MIT's groundbreaking timeshare system, and Unix was the counterpart for the workstation as a subtle joke (Unix vs Multics, One [user] versus many] and some C jokes. Perhaps not that far from the truth. It runs on a PC, and now even the PowerPC, it's not rocket science from implementation. It is extremely flexible in the APIs at the cost of security, segmentation faults, fschecks, and so forth. It has strengths in the short term (cheap, many free packages, universal acceptance, etc) but will it survive the long term? As Wirt mentioned, it may die out as a fad as he suggests, or else collapse on it's own shortcomings (my prediction). Only NT is a ground-up rebuild of an OS with Unix in mind in ages, but it lacks much of the appealing software (so far, but they're growing) of Unix. MPE took a bold step forward with Posix, but haven't followed through with the necessary add-ons to make it truly and "open" system. "Open system" is such a buzzword. If MPE and HP-UX are both "Open" why are there two software divisions? Are there any two platforms that are 100% source independent? (maybe there are, but point remains "some" porting effort is inherent in most cross-platform apps). One noteful point with regard to Posix/Open Systems/etc., in various surveys of the MPE user base, few people have bothered to explore this new environment. Many of those that have tried were buried in the esoteric quirks and shortcomings of the initial offering. Some of those who stayed would like to see some things changed (is Posix a dead product now?) to make it really valuable. MPE users, in the traditional sense, embrace their platform for it's clear and obvious strengths in the face of popularity. This has never changed. MPE nor the 3000 has ever clearly "dominated" the hardware or software market as the principal player; but they have had their impact as measured by the Datapro (Datamation?) survey as ranking #1 in overall customer satisfaction. That speaks volumes. It works well, and rarely, if ever ruins your day. MPE has a solid foundation that should never be lost; but to face reality, the applications arena is suffering because vendors have shifted to Unix platforms where the numbers are more favorable. As the MPE market shrinks, 3rd party offerings will decrease in numbers and increase in price to recover porting efforts. Posix brought us to the peak of the summit, but still fell short (IMHO we're that close; others may disagree). If we can't crest the hill to compete in the current market, we may well follow RTE into the abyss of obscurity/obsolescence. We have NCSA httpd (despite it's faults, but then look at OpenMarket which had some serious effort put into it), Gnu tools, a BSD library, sendmail, lynx, and more recently perl5, freevt3k, etc. Some argue Posix is a cryptic and confusing add-on to MPE, yet considering your alternative is Unix, you should count your blessings. Once you install a Posix app, you can run most of them from an MPE session/job, have journalled file system, integrated backups, and other advantages without day-to-day dealings with a shell. All this and MPE too! I am not suggesting MPE "turns into" Unix. There is so much that *could* happen, but few MPE users are interested in considering let alone using these new tools. Most upsetting are those users who are now facing a mandated Unix conversion that still scoff at Posix. With some dilligence you might be surprised what you can do with your 3000. When the line is boldly drawn between Unix and MPE, we're a struggling piece of history. Keep that line fuzzy and we can compete in the applications arena. I don't think anyone has left MPE by choice, but rather by demands of their outside applications. I know this first-hand, we're facing such a choice and perl5 was one such pre-requisite (thus my interest in that port). In summary, I appreciate the passion with which Wirt and others defend MPE for MPE's sake; there is no argument if you have a stable environment and no major developments in progress. I understand the lure of Unix, but I want no part of it -- if you type 'exit' in the Unix shell you don't get a colon prompt to escape to reality; you are stuck in your "chosen" life. MPE is wonderful; it's low-level structure is immaculate. Unix is open, but a widely hacked kernel never designed for speed/ease not reliability. MPE is a two-bedroom flat on a foundation of solid rock, Unix is a high-rise condo built on a foundation of sand with discount rates for new tenants. Carry that a step further and the MPE "flat" has no cable, touch-tone phone, and only recently offered locations in mixed-housing neighborhoods. Despite opposing views from many of my well-respected readers, Posix is our last hope for longevity. Die-hard, mission critical applications and their customers can only last so long. Respectfully, Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>