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From: tenny@z.dec.com (Dave Tenny)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: NeXT/GNU license agreement w.r.t. Objective-C
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.130953.12476@engage.enet.dec.com>
Date: 10 Dec 90 13:00:27 GMT
Sender: news@engage.enet.dec.com (USENET News System)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 30


In trying to choose which language I'll be doing in my NeXT development,
one thing I have to ask myself about use of Obj-c is how portable the
application will be. (Mine is not a NeXT specific application).
If the implementation of Obj-c by GNU means GNU support of Obj-c,
then this would imply that the Gnu Obj-c implementations will ultimately
end up running everywhere that gcc/g++ do.  Is this true?  If not,
then Obj-c isn't going to be quite as portable (let alone free) as
using g++.

While I'm here asking about languages, here's one for the NeXT Lispers.
While Allegro CL on the old cubes compares favorably with other Lisps
on similiar speed platforms, I'm finding it just a bit slow for what
I'd hoped to use it for.  I can't tell if it's entirely paging (on my  8mb
system), or also a general throughput bottleneck on the next.  The CPU figures
during perceived bottlenecks are generally in the 50-70% range.
Can people who really use ACL tell me if first hand experience with
68040 based NeXT machines alleviate the performance problem?  How about
another 8mb memory?  I need to decide which way to allocate my pennies.
I guess my real concern is that ACL is big enough, and with code generation
characteristics that it may be something which the throughput-mindedness
of NeXT machines can't deal with.  (For instance, too wide-spread 
code characteristics for effective cache use, or 100ns memory).

(Can some hardware expert tell me if 100ns memory is fast enough for
 effective use of the 68040?  Sounds awful slow to me).

Thanks for tips on Lisp of GNu Obj-c directions.

Dave