Re: Alpha remembrance day

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:14:09 UTC, David Mathog <mathog@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Andrew wrote:

Trying to re-write history by claiming that Alpha did not suffer from a
shortage of applications is rubbish, it was in fact a key contributor in
the decline even if the blame for the lack of software could be laid at
Digital and then Compaqs doors.

Andrew is right on this one, the lack of native software was the primary
reason we eventually abandoned VMS. This was true even though most of
the software we used came as source - it just didn't make sense to have
to port every program we needed from Unix -> VMS. OS and hardware costs
were also factors, and I'd argue that these continued high costs were
mostly to blame for the lack of software. It was a vicious circle: high
OS and hardware cost -> small market -> repeat. Not exactly the
ecosystem that software developers wanted to invest in.

The only trouble with the theory, and it may well be correct, is that
the same situation, a dearth of applications, was always going to
apply to Itaniuim too.

--
Cheers - Dave W.
.

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