Re: Application server

On Wed, 15 Nov 2000, Eric D. Pierce wrote:

> NT's architecture (which some claim is VMS running on Intel)
> is based on being an application server as well as file/print
> server.

There's good reason for claiming that.

Dave Cutler is the fellow responsible for the design of VMS, a venerated OS. Those that use it, love it. Those that don't use it, are confused. I count myself among that group.

Mr. Cutler was designing a new OS for DEC. The internal name for it was 'Pink'.

DEC cancelled Pink after quite a bit of time, effort and money had been put into it.

Mr. Cutler was quite peeved at this, as you might well imagine.

At one board meeting, he appeared in something less than the traditional apparel one might expect at an assemblage of executives in Boston in the 80's. His T-shirt with the image of a large wood screw on the front accurately conveyed his feelings on the matter.

At this point, he was an easy target for master manipulator William Gates III.

Dave was the chief architect for the original version of Windows NT. I don't know if he is still involved in that.

He was not given free reign however. NT would still have artifacts of DOS and 16 bit computing.

I stated earlier that I was confused on this matter. The reason for this is that users of VMS love the OS. If the same designer was responsible for NT, why do so many people that are familiar with it hate it?

I really should not be confused, as NT was not going to be allowed to stray too far from Windows and DOS, and was not going to garner the same accolades that VMS received.

This is all just a long-winded way of saying why I think folks may refer to NT as 'VMS for Intel'.

And if any of this story is incorrect, don't hesitate to correct me. It's been a few years since this stuff happened, Received on Thu Nov 16 2000 - 10:24:27 CST