Steve L
May 21 2004, 12:49 pm show options
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
From: Steve L - Find messages by this author
Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 13:49:19 -0400
Local: Fri, May 21 2004 12:49 pm
Subject: Re: Dave Cutler and VMS
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On Fri, 21 May 2004 02:06:23 GMT, JF M wrote:
>Steve L wrote:
>> Cutler left VMS in 1980 before version 2.0 was released, and was not further
>> involved with the VMS OS development.
>That article alludes to the fact that Cutler left Digital at VMS 5.0, making
>it look to the microsoft weenies that Cutler was still involved with VMS.
I know. There seems to be a strong tendency to embellish Cutler's involvement with VMS as we know it today. His involvement with VAXELN is also missing from most of the chronologies I have read. If one looks at the original high-level design of NT, with separate subsystems and message-passing, it is almost a carbon-copy of VAXELN. As with VAXELN (and VAX PL/I and VAX C), it took several years and lots of engineers to actually make NT work, with the "elegance" of the separate subsystems replaced by the practicality of more tightly-coupled code.
Cutler was very heavily involved in the kernel design for VMS 1.0, though a lot of it looked like RSX-11D (no surprise.) He kept the role of project manager through 1979 and perhaps partly into 1980, and then left to do PL/I.
My personal view is that Cutler does not deserve all the credit he is given for VMS. I consider the contributions of visionaries such as Tom Hastings, Dick Hustvedt, Peter Conklin and others to be of at least equal, if not greater importance. They're the ones who kept an eye on the future and made sure that VMS had the architectural foundation it needed to succed in the long term. Otherwise, it would be just a 32-bit RSX. Consider the "common language environment", something pretty much unheard of back in 1977 (or since then, for that matter.) VMS is one of the few significant operating systems where there is a (mostly) level playing field for programming languages, and common calling conventions. Tom Hastings deserves most of the credit for that.
I don't want to minimize Cutler's contributions - they were significant. But I don't feel he quite deserves the "Father of VMS" label that is so often applied to him.
Steve
i still believe it was an attempted immitation of VMS reguardless of who created VMS... even the name was a kind of in "Joke" like HAL was to IBM. the letters preceding IBM are HAL... WNT are the letters following VMS. coincidence??? 8^)