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From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: NeXT Review;Quite a machine, but not a Mac
Message-ID: <6576@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 9 Apr 90 19:44:55 GMT
References: <6453@blake.acs.washington.edu> <5522@okstate.UUCP>
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Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi
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In article <5522@okstate.UUCP> minich@a.cs.okstate.edu (MINICH ROBERT JOHN) writes:
>  I think you'd do well to talk with someone who has actually written
>for the Mac about these "details" before you go to far in putting them
>down. There are definite limitations, but not at all the ones you
>describe. 

One clarification: I *have* written for the Mac.  I quit that job 2.5
years ago.  So I've forgotten the exact gory details in 2.5 years.  I
must have gone to some effort to purge the details -- and MPW, and MPW
C -- out of my mind.  The fact still remains that the Mac was the
*worst* programming environment I have ever dealt with.

The best programming environment, by the way, was not the NeXT; it was
Xerox Lisp machines for a graphic interface and DEC-20's for a TTY
interface.  Both of these, however, are dead systems.

One detail I do remember is that object assignment via malloc() is
very slow on the Mac.  If you need to create lots of small objects
(e.g. strings in a data structure) you are much better off creating a
single large object and subdividing it yourself than individual small
objects; the difference is seconds of real time.

Of course, Mac programmers will tell you that you shouldn't use
malloc().  No matter that you're porting a large library and merely
want to put a Mac user interface on top of it; their answer is "you
should rewrite it."  The NeXT environment sometimes betrays this
attitude too; fortunately it is generally possible to ignore it.

Let me say this; I have nothing but admiration and respect for those
individuals who develop software for the Mac.  No one is calling you
"stupid", or telling you you should migrate to the NeXT.  There really
is no comparison between the two machines.  Some Mac users/programmers
may well want to migrate to a NeXT, but they're the guys who wanted
more out of a Mac than a Mac was going to deliver anyway.  You won't
see people migrating from a NeXT to a Mac; if NeXT goes under then
SUN, IBM, DEC, etc. will be the beneficiaries.
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