Hi Beeza,

I have tinkered with Lazarus a long time ago, and actually wrote a simple program to query a PostgreSQL database. I keep meaning to get deeper into it but haven't yet.

I'm surprised to hear that VAX Fortran was the recommended language. We took delivery of a two node cluster (both 8700's I think) in 1987. This came with a fair bit of training in Reading and West Gorton (in Manchester), and we had some consultancy available to us to get us started doing the stuff we needed to do. The cluster came with VAX/VMS version 4.x I think.

One of the consultants recommended DEC Pascal for our system-level projects, and wrote us some example code to get us up and running. That's where I got the impression that Pascal was their most complete language at the time (other than low level stuff like BLISS, which we hadn't bought). We did use Fortran too, and I drew the short straw and ended up teaching it to various students - we ran service courses in the early days.

Just as an aside, one of the then Digital consultants lives a few doors away from me. I have tried to get him to record a chat with me about the DEC times, but I haven't convinced him yet!

Ah, the manuals! I remember someone telling me "Dave, your manuals have arrived", and I went to the loading bay to find an entire pallet of them waiting there! They were really good though.