VMS was the first multiuser system I used in 1991. I was amazed that a single computer could have 300 users logged in all doing their own thing.

I learned to program in C and tried using Borland Turbo C on a DOS. Go outside of the array index and you could easily crash the entire machine which meant reboot and try it again. I thought the concept of memory protection was incredible! Why didn't every computer have that?

It was the first time I saw email, sending messages, and the phone utility for chatting with other users while waiting for your programs to run in the background.

I moved on to an IBM RT running AIX and got hooked on Unix. That's the system I wanted and have been running Linux since 1994. But VMS still holds a special place.