Contrary to the previous responders, I have fond memories of VAX/VMS computers. Still have one in the attic too.
Digital Equipment Corp. introduced the VAX line of mini computers into the engineering/scientific markets back in the mid-late 80's. At the time, the mainframes were being used for business/financial applications. The mini's were successful because they were relatively affordable and because they put a lot of computing tools into the hands of the engineers and scientists. Instead of waiting for an "IS" guy to write a program, the engineers could jump in and hack one together themselves. It was a period of great empowerment. Fortran, assembler, C, were some of the main languages.
The VAX/VMS operating system was/is very robust, with great development features (tons of system services, interprocess communication methods, great scripting language--DCL, etc.). It was not unusual to reboot them once a year--remember this is a machine that had dozens to hundreds of interactive users each day--try that with a Wintel machine. They were particularly good for running real-time systems because you could control resource utilization at the operating system level to make sure the important processes got priority. They still have the best clustering technology. I've personally run over 50 VAXes in a cluster, and had a friend at DuPont that ran a 500+ node cluster.
The companies I worked for were pharmaceutical manufacturers. We used the VAXes for automated warehouse systems (order fulfillment, crane and wire-guided forktruck control, shipping systems), laboratory automations, manufacturing control systems, sales and marketing applications, CAD, document management, and (in the pre-PC days) office automation.
Unfortunately, the retirement of the founder, the PC revolution, the advent of cheap UNIX hardware, and the utter lack of any marketing ability all combined to drive DEC out of business.
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