
You made me what I am
I have such fond memories of VMS:-
I left school at 16yrs and straight in to a software house writing applications for local authorities using VAX BASIC.
DCL was a wonderful shell scripting language. So powerful. So simple.
LSE - great editor
VT420/520's - I would later replace them with Gateway 2000 PC's running Win95 and Reflection, because it was cheaper and more flexible than a 'dumb' terminal. Better? Hmm...
Lovely clean, clear manuals. With the folds half-way along them so they stood up on their own.
The "RECALL" command was a personal favourite.
Long filenames and versioning - came as a shock to me when I later moved to Windows and found those lacking.
Manipulating FDL's by hand.
Upgrades/installs that just worked.
Limited downtime, because you only needed to take down parts of the system, not all of it.
0.25in tape
TK50's
Call's to the SMG$ library - so I could create "windows" in my green-screen apps.
DEC Alpha.
I would later get in to systems management, which brought me exposure to DecNET, Pathworks, Manageworks, TeMIP.
Pathworks gave me exposure to move more towards NT/Windows Server specific networks. Until in about 2002-3 when I no longer went near OVMS systems at all.
I'll never forget the first time I used Clustering on Windows. I couldn't believe how it "worked", compared to on OVMS.
I may not be using OVMS any more. But, I certainly wouldn't be sat here, aged 42 with 26yrs of professional I.T. experience crossing programming/analysis/management/networking/etc, were it not for OVMS.
I'll miss you. You were my first true I.T. <3.