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How Big Is VMS?

(vmssoftware.com)
77 points rbanffy | 2 comments | 03 Apr 25 18:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.425s | source
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jamesy0ung ◴[03 Apr 25 21:08 UTC] No.43575439[source]▶
Is there any reason to use VMS today other than for existing applications that cannot be migrated? I've heard its reliability is legendary, but I've never tried it myself. The 1 year licensed VM seems excessively annoying. Is it just old and esoteric, or does it still have practical use? At least with Linux, multiple vendors release and support distros and it is mainstream, whereas with VMS, you'd be stuck with VSI.
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1. jonstewart ◴[03 Apr 25 21:18 UTC] No.43575557[source]▶
I had a job at a place in college, back 1997–2000, that was run by a big DEC Alpha server running VMS. VMS was dying then.

I was just a lowly kid programmer working on a side project, so I can't tell you whether it's still uniquely good at something to justify its usage today. It worked. But it was weird and arcane (not that Unix isn't, but Unix won) and using it today for a new project would come with a lot of friction.

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2. cbm-vic-20 ◴[03 Apr 25 21:40 UTC] No.43575799[source]▶
VAX/VMSCluster was like the Kubernetes of the 1980s. Lots of features that appeared in k8s decades later were baked into VMS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMScluster