The Best Operating System Gets Even Better
Wednesday, July 1, 2015 at 12:24PM
Updated on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 at 1:46PM by
Joseph Kelley
The most enjoyable aspect of being a Mac person is using OS X. When I got my first Mac in 2006 it came with OS X 10.3 (Tiger). It was a bit of a homecoming for me. In the late 80s my career as a developer started when VMS and HPUX were dominant operating systems on professional workstations and mini computers used by petrochemical companies for supervisory control and advanced business systems. I wrote many custom applications in ANSI C for both platforms. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) machines ran their own operating system called VMS. Hewlett Packard workstations and minis ran a flavor of UNIX, HPUX (HP UNIX). C was the programming language of choice because of its portability. If a programmer strictly adhered to the ANSI C standard, source code would compile and link on either platform. Well, any platform for that matter. I spent my first five years as a developer working on these platforms before Windows NT came along and virtually swept everything else aside. Like most people in my field, I spent the next 15 years in Microsoft hell. So, when I got my first Mac running UNIX-based OS X, it felt like I was re-kindling an old friendship.
