You might be a VMS Bigot if.....

From: McFadden, Mike <mmcfadden_at_cmh.edu>
Date: Wed Oct 4 12:41:29 2000

Real programmers use DCL and FORTRAN.

I used to work for a large engineering firm which used VAXes and VT220's for
everything. Mostly we used 11/750's and 11/780's for CAD/CAM. We tried PRO
350's and 380's for engineering applications. I originally programmed
structural design of pipe hangers on a PRO 350. For word processing they
purchased AT&T 6300's with 10MB HardCards to replace all of the typewriters.
All of a sudden everybody could create a document and send it out. File
copies were never created or lost. Some people used WordPerfect, MultiMate,
WordStar, and IBM DisplayWrite 3. Fonts, margins, and layout all went
crazy. How would you like to pay 4 million dollars for a set of Coal fired
power plant manuals and end up with a mess?

We standardized on IBM DisplayWrite 3 and I was given the task of capturing
all of the printing and filing it. We used a MicroVAX II to drive Xerox
2700 laser printers on each floor. Every time you printed we captured and
archived a copy. I then created a FORTRAN77 program on the VAX to translate
EBCDIC IBM DisplayWrite3 documents to ASCII and then print them. We also
included the ability to take HPGL plot files and scale them to fit into an
area in a document. We also added special symbols, foreign characters and
logos.

Engineering companies only believe in FORTRAN. We had a bad experience with
a programmer who wrote lots of code in "C" and then left.

Most of my support time was spend proving that my software was not at fault
when the PC's were not working, the network was hosed or the printer was out
of paper. Computer viruses were not a problem, only game players, and wierd
spell checkers.

I still have my copies of the FORTRAN version of a word processor print
spooling application.

Mike
mmcfadden_at_cmh.edu
Received on Wed Oct 04 2000 - 12:41:29 BST