[clue-talk] survey results

[Jed S. Baer]

On Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:16:24 -0600 (MDT)
Bruce Ediger wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, Jed S. Baer wrote:
> 
> > NOS (Control Data Cyber)
> 
> Yipes, a Truly Awful Operating System!
> 
> The only OS worse than NOS: it's successor, NOS/VE.  NOS/VE was a huge
> step backwards.  It's amazing that CDC stayed in business as long as it
> did.

Oh, it probably was the VE. Uh, 1985-ish? I actually got very good at
writing COBOL very quickly in their line editor. (Don't snicker, I wrote
mostly FORTRAN on that job, and mostly on the VAX.) I got to where I was
pretty good with the full-screen editor (aptly named 'FSE' as I recall),
but it was pretty clunky. But that was near the end of my run at USBR.

At any rate, I like to say that you just haven't lived until you've
worked on an EBCDIC machine with 60-bit word. Dealing with 6/12 ASCII was
a real treat too.

jed