Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Hello and Comments Message-ID: <14874@smoke.brl.mil> Date: 16 Jan 91 18:46:54 GMT References: Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD. Lines: 26 In article SHBOUM@MACALSTR.EDU writes: >On Jan. 13, Doug Gwyn writes: >>First of all, if an application does what is wanted, who cares whether >>or not it exploits system-specific features that are not needed to get >>the job done? > Well unfortunatly, this "Well who cares? it works..." attitude ... That wasn't waht I said! If an application does not satisy your requirements, then it might still "work" but it doesn't meet the criterion I mentioned. You even gave the example of using a text-screen program because it was faster than one using the graphics screen. If that is a legitimate concern for you, then it makes a good example of not exploiting system-specific features just because they're there. > And by porting programs though using C or FORTRAN, or whatever, it >becomes much more difficult to tailor it for each system. Sure you can make >patches to the code, but the amount of information that you have to learn about >each system becomes staggering. The amount you have to learn about a system to take advantage of system- specific features is not increased by having the bulk of the application coded in a high-level language. If anything, it's slightly reduced. Certainly the amount of effort to port the code is far less, assuming that it was well engineered to start with.