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From: aard@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Arcturian Mega-Dude )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: NeXT Mach (was Re: UNIX is yuck (was Re: Next intro...)
Summary: What's the problem?
Message-ID: <13684@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 29 Oct 90 09:55:09 GMT
References: <1990Oct6.172357.18366@smsc.sony.com> <90301.081741KPURCELL@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>
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In article <90301.081741KPURCELL@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>, KPURCELL@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK writes:
> >|> > With Think C or MPW 2.02, it isn't hard at all.
> >|>
> >|> ...once you've written a few hundred lines of environment-handling code
> >|> in preparation for printing "Hello World."
> >The Mac may be a lot more difficult to program than it needs to be, but let's
> >(you may want to add a readln to the end to stop the window disappearing until
> >RETURN is typed). And you _do not_ have to write hundresd of lines to do the
> >same in a dialog box. Of course, once you get into non-trivial programs,
> >things
> >aren't too pretty.
> >--
> >Philip Machanick

Actually, it's not really that bad.  Here's the exact program I used
to test the ANSI C library in THINK C:

main ()
{
	printf('Hello World!\n');
}

Yep, it not only works, it works beautifully.  But let's put this all
in perspective.  If you need to simply "crank out code" and don't
give a hoot about user interface, fine - use the ANSI C libraries.
But if you want to produce an application that follows the human
interface guidelines and is easy to use then you use the Mac toolbox
routines.  Yes, the toolbox routines force you to use many more
lines of code but look at what you get:  You get windows, pull-down
menus and an interface that is consistant across many applications.
How many lines of code do you think it would take to do pull-down
menus, etc. with an MS-DOS machine (for example)?  First of all you
couldn't use the standard text mode, second of all you couldn't just
call these toolbox routines, you'd have to WRITE them!

Anyway, my point is that the Mac let's you do both.  You can write
good ol' fashioned ANSI programs OR you can support the interface.
I think that the extra code is worth it.

-- 
Anthony C. Ard  ..................................................... :-) 
University of California, San Diego  .................  Cognitive Science
InterNet:tony@sdcc13.ucsd.edu BitNet:tony@ucsd UUCP:tony%sdcc13.UUCP@ucsd
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