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From: news@bbn.COM (News system owner ID)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: dosread.c again
Message-ID: <47522@bbn.COM>
Date: 30 Oct 89 21:00:44 GMT
References: <3717@ast.cs.vu.nl> <3a18.2536ede8@ibmpcug.co.uk> <3721@ast.cs.vu.nl> <6615@ficc.uu.net> <2526@optilink.UUCP>
Reply-To: pplacewa@algedi.bbn.com (Paul W. Placeway)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 35

cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer):
< Missed all the nasty remarks about the "Macintoy" a while back?

Well, no, actually.

Programming the Mac is a very "a ha" sort of thing -- the learning
curve is rather long, but after a few months it all makes sense, and
is relatively elegant.  If you don't "get it", then you havn't thought
long enough about it yet -- go and meditate some more...

Most of the people who have been saying otherwize have been doing
MeSsy-DOS for so long that it seems to have rotted their brains...
(only 1/2 :-); flames to /dev/null, NUL:, Trashcan (your choice)).

The basic bit of uglyness is that you have to start up all the
handlers by hand because the Mac doesn't have a real OS.  Neither does
the PC, for that matter.

Also, you *do* have to pay attention to *all* the result codes (but
that's true for everything anyway), and you have to poll for events
rather than getting interupts (but this is true for most window
systems).

As for command line interfaces, Apple loves them _for_development_ --
MPW is command line based, and works Just Fine, Thanks.

Plus you get the added bonus of consistancy: all applications look
basically the same, so it takes about 1/10 the time to learn to use a
Mac than for a PC (this tidbit from one of the PC rags' surveys).

Look at it this way: MSDOS is an overgrown program loader; the MacOS
is an overgrown user interface.  Neither is an operating system, but
the second is better for running applications.

		-- Paul Placeway