Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!jln
From: jln@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!!
Message-ID: <911@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 8 Nov 90 04:47:39 GMT
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Organization: Northwestern University
Lines: 77
References:<1990Nov7.160943.19804@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <90311.152209CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> <1990Nov7.223221.14989@agate.berkeley.edu> <1990Nov7.230807.17914@agate.berkeley.edu>

In article <1990Nov7.230807.17914@agate.berkeley.edu> 
knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group) writes:

> 4.  Programmers generally like to use both the power of Unix and the 
> power of the NeXT's GUI and program development environment.  So if your
> NeXT lab is full of programmers, you'll probably see them running 
> Unix in one window and hooking up program buttons with a mouse in other 
> windows.

I also like the power of sophisticated traditional command languages when 
I really need them.  There's absolutely no doubt that direct manipulation 
human interfaces (GUIs) will never be able to provide the power of complex 
formal traditional languages.  On the Mac MPW fills this need quite nicely 
for me.  It's even better than the usual UNIX shell languages in most 
ways.  But you don't see me using MPW to do things like everyday file 
maintenance (unless I need wildcards or a fancy filter or something else 
special, and the need for this sort of thing is much less on the Mac than 
on typical UNIX systems).  The NeXT users I know, on the other hand, do 
almost all of their housekeeping from terminal windows, and they make very 
little use of the much-heralded NeXT "GUI" file management tools.  As far 
as I can tell the great majority of them might as well be using VT100 
terminals or at most a cheap X terminal most of the time.  Maybe our NU 
NeXT users are just ignorant, I don't know.

> I think the best criteria to determine the answer to this question is the
> quality of the software produced in both environments and the length of 
> time it took to write that software.  NeXT programmers agree that they
> save 50-75% in development time over a traditional GUI environment.  NeXT
> software speaks for itself.

Certainly they save time over a TRADITIONAL GUI environment (non 
object-oriented).  I wonder about the 50-75% figure (seems a bit high to 
me - in my Mac projects I don't devote this much time to my interfaces, 
and my interfaces are rather highly regarded).  But the only fair 
comparison would be between NeXT's current professional object-oriented 
development environment and Apple's current professional object-oriented 
development environment.  Is there anybody out there who has made serious 
use of both environments and would care to compare them?  Please don't 
compare Interface Builder to that college lab you did way back when with 
MacPascal or the old non-object oriented Think products - it's not fair.  
I'm particularly interested in objective first-hand comparisons between 
the current NeXT environment and Apple's most recent release 2.0 of the 
MacApp system.

I think that one of the problems is that with the Mac you have to pay 
extra to purchase programming tools and powerful development environments 
like MPW and MacApp, while the corresponding tools usually come with the 
NeXT.  This gives people who aren't familiar with the tools available on 
the Mac the incorrect impression that these things can't be done on the 
Mac (for example, command languages with pipes and filters and I/O 
redirection, fancy shell scripts, traditional quick-and-dirty glass 
teletype C programs, and state-of-the-art object oriented development 
environments are the kinds of things I'm talking about).

Don't get me wrong - I'm way too old and I've seen way too many computers 
and operating systems over the years to be a religious fanatic.  I think 
the NeXT is great, especially the new faster more inexpensive models.  I 
like the Mac too.  I just see too much comparison of apples and oranges 
(excuse the pun) in this thread and elsewhere, and I wanted to correct 
this.  I'd be very interested in hearing direct, fair comparisons from 
people who really know both sides of the story.  Perhaps the NeXT 
environment really is significantly superior, and I'd like to know, but I 
haven't seen anything in this thread yet that comes close to convincing 
me, or is even very relevant to the real issues.

The other main topic on this thread has been the issue of Mac vs. NeXT for 
non-hackers.  I have to laugh at this one - 99% of the people I know and 
work with who use Macs without much help from anybody would be hopelessly 
lost trying to use a NeXT or any other UNIX workstation, with or without a 
layered GUI, no matter how good the GUI might be.  The NeXT may be a 
wonderful workstation for programmers and scientific researchers, but it's 
not a machine for the masses.

John Norstad
Academic Computing and Network Services
Northwestern University
jln@casbah.acns.nwu.edu