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From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Computer Architecture question -- Daye Haynie
Message-ID: <1991May8.042432.27636@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 8 May 91 04:24:32 GMT
References: <y_4G=zw&1@cs.psu.edu> <48625@ut-emx.uucp> <#c4G!au$1@cs.psu.edu>
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
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In article <#c4G!au$1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes:
>Of course it will be some work for NeXT.  However, for the software
>developers it will be easy, so 99.99% of the current software will run
>within days on the 88K machines.  While your finally hand-coded
>assembly code on the Amiga will take quite a bit of effort.
	I think you are overestimating the number of programs that were
written in AL on the Amiga. I would not be too afraid to make a bet that
only games and *maybe* less than 5 commercial packages (not big name ones
at that) were written in AL at all, and that where they were, it was in well
placed low-level functions such as time critical loops, which would be easy
to replace with HL code immediately if the new machine was fast enough that
AL was no longer needed, or fairly simply coded over in the new machines
AL.
	I have never seen ANY commercial program actually "brag" about being
written in AL (as you stated in an earlier message), and in fact, the only
people I have ever seen admit to writing anything other than a small utility
(which people could live without) in AL were die-hard demo and game coders
from Europe, who would probably not migrate to the new machine right away
anyway.
	I know that 100% of what I write is in C or another HL that I could
reasonably expect to be available for the new machine, and I would expect to
be able to simply recompile my own software in a matter of minutes on the
new machine, just as you say people will do with the nExt.
	Do you really think that serious programs like WorkPerfect, Maple,
etc. etc. which are available on many different platforms are written in
some form of AL?


				Dave