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From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Okay, you Amiga Types, its time to bash your amiga. :)
Message-ID: <1991Feb11.023952.19951@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 11 Feb 91 02:39:52 GMT
References: <91031.215406WTW101@psuvm.psu.edu> <7692@sugar.hackercorp.com> <481@cronos.metaphor.com>
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 43

In article <481@cronos.metaphor.com> djh@neuromancer.metaphor.com (Dallas J. Hodgson) writes:
>I've used Aztec since it came out, Microsoft C up to 6.0, and Borland's
>Turbo C and C++. Nothing on the Amiga comes close. Borland's and Microsoft's
		  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>integrated programming environments are a quantum leap in programmer
>efficiency. SDB is OK, but it's not really that far removed from Sun's
>dbxtool, now is it?
	Have you used CPR at all (the SAS debugger). I have used Turbo C,
and used MS-C extensively, and I can say from knowledgeable personal
experience with both the MS-C and Lattice/SAS debuggers, that the MS-C has
nothing on SAS CPR, and CPR has many advantages over the MS-C debugger,
like the ability to write macros that can do just about anything, and are
especially good for writing macros that take the tedium out of singlestepping
through the code, when a simple breakpoint or watch variable/location won't
cut it. And the ability to support any size screen you want, with resizeable
command/listing windows, with more than 80 cols if you choose, the ability
to "pop" the application screen to the front (or run with one screen partially
revealed, what you can't do on a PC at ANY price) are also nice. Maybe you
should look past the Aztec product, which, from all reviews and testamonials
I have heard from past owners, has not been updated much compared to SAS,
has no lead in compile time any longer, and offers nothing that SAS does,
except a less functional ANSI compiler than SAS.
>On the code-generation level, neither Aztec nor SAS compilers provided the
>aggressive levels of optimization that Microsoft, Metaware and GreenHills
>do. Especially the latter - there's a REAL MEN's compiler.
	Did you ever stop to think that this may have more to do with the
processor they are designed for? On the PC you HAVE to do lots of optimization,
due to all the screwy modes of the 80x86 CPU line. In real-world cases the
SAS compiler has always seemed to produce:
	1) Smaller code than MS-C
	2) Faster code than MS-C
What other optimizations are there other than size and time?
>I spoke with Jim Goodnow (formerly of Manx) several years ago just before
>5.0 came out. "Where's the Amiga answer to Turbo-C?" His reply was more
>along the lines of "(yawn) Whassamatter, don't you like our environment?"
Have you used SAS/C? It doesn't sound like it. Besides, that's someone from
Manx, who it never seemed were very interested in producing a state-of-the-art
compiler for the Amiga (after all, they did the ST version first (and even a
version for the Apple II), and it seemed like they wanted to keep their
compilers compatible on all platforms.


			Dave