VMS had early support for clustering and associated technologies like shared filesystems with a distributed lock manager.
VMS had amazing support for terminal servers, so that each terminal user could choose among several connected computers. Terminal I/O was almost completely offloaded: it was common for other users to get delays and random short freezes, but VMS terminal users had smooth responsive I/O all the time.
DEC mandated the Common Language Environment, something like the C library calling convention but much better thought out and specified. It was totally normal to write an application in two or three languages because you felt that each language had advantages for that part. Every compiler and interpreter knew how to call functions from the CLE and export their own.
> VMS terminal users had smooth responsive I/O all the time.
I recall that you could press Ctrl-T and it would instantly echo back some useful information about the running process, like CPU time and page faults. That was a nifty feature.
I loved VMS. Everything was so coherent, whereas Unix looked like it was hacked together overnight by a bunch of people who never talked to each other. These days, I like Unix, but back in the 80s, I only tolerated it.
VMS had amazing support for terminal servers, so that each terminal user could choose among several connected computers. Terminal I/O was almost completely offloaded: it was common for other users to get delays and random short freezes, but VMS terminal users had smooth responsive I/O all the time.
DEC mandated the Common Language Environment, something like the C library calling convention but much better thought out and specified. It was totally normal to write an application in two or three languages because you felt that each language had advantages for that part. Every compiler and interpreter knew how to call functions from the CLE and export their own.