Doug Burns’ feelings about the quirky nature of OpenVMS reminded me of the fun I used to have with files on PDP-11 and DEC System 10s. PIP was a great program, and no Marko, PIP is not on my resume (and nor is DATATRIEVE, my first database, for that matter)
And to prove that I really am senile and have remembered my first programming work as if it was yesterday:
PIP *.*;*/RM
will delete all versions of all files, no questions asked… don’t think I used it (much)
Datatrieve wasn’t a database, you senile old fool!
It was a query language that worked against flat files, indexed files and databases. My Advanced Datatrieve certificate is proudly displayed on my home office wall. I last was a wombat in 1983 (or was it 1985? The mind is alert, but the body forgets…).
I’m still being paid to work on 4GL’s though. One still works on RMS files as well as on Oracle.
Had forgotten about PIP, though… need to turn on one of my PDP’s one of these days…
By: joel garry on August 31, 2007
at 11:09 pm
Datatrieve wasn’t a database, you senile old fool!
Thank you, Nurse…
By: Peter Scott on September 1, 2007
at 8:40 am
A PDP-11 (70?) was the first mini-computer I used while I was on a YOP scheme at Heriot Watt University. A bunch of architects who were writing their own CAD system took pity on me.
I was lucky, though, in that it used the free Unix (version 7?) from Bell Labs (?)
So many questions, so few answers, but I remember it finding quite exciting. Those Winchester disk pack things were funny in retrospect
By: Doug Burns on September 2, 2007
at 9:34 pm