In retrospect, many of the observations are good, even foresightfull.

I believe that VAX/VMS was based on some of these experiences plus careful reading of Structured Programming by Djikstra.

Unfortunately, DEC didn't grok the performance issue of microcoded CISC and Sun Sparc ate their lunch.

Lessons DEC learned:

. Combining engineering of hardware and software at the same time . Networking as a medium of exchange including for storage (cluster interconnect, C I) . Diverse software support, from C, PL/I, Cobol, etc . VAXcluster as a means to converge management, storage, scalability, and so on

Novel tech:

. Software-supported coding, such as language-sensitive editing, w/o emacs . A basic data architecture, based on Rdb. Weak, but sort of functional

Oopses: . RISC. Eventually they made Alpha but FP sucked, even architecturally