Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!autodesk!glang
From: glang@Autodesk.COM (Gary Lang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Just what we need - PC programs for the NeXT
Message-ID: <1023@autodesk.COM>
Date: 2 Dec 90 23:37:28 GMT
References: <1990Nov28.234910.28347@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <11920@milton.u.washington.edu> <25678@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: Autodesk Inc., Sausalito CA, USA
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In-reply-to: bb@loggerhead.cis.ufl.edu's message of 1 Dec 90 08:00:12 GMT

>memory.  As a consequence, when this program hangs as it does
>occassionally, your window manager (SunView) is shot dead in the
>water.  Will people never learn?

Well you have a good point. But there are other things to consider.
The main mode of operation for a good piece of software is
not an error condition but running under normal circumstances.
Suppose that not writing to memory meant unacceptable performance.
Would you be willing to trade a clean death of an application for
those few times it crashes for blazing performance when it isn't
crashing?

Part of the PC success story comes from the high degree of interaction
afforded by performance tricks like writing to video memory directly.
The perception of slowness has hindered large-scale accceptance of
GUI platforms for quite some time. The systems now have pretty
good performance even with large OO toolkits like NeXTStep, but it didn't
used to bethis way.

Running OpenLook on my 16MB Sparc1+, I can safely say that the performance
is unacceptable to an audience consisting of would-be former PC users.
That is to say, everything feels like a Mac 512K did 5 years ago. If
Lotus has gotten around this by mucking with the system and made their
application useful except in error conditions, I take my hat off to them.

- g