Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site osu-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!osu-eddie!elwell From: elwell@osu-eddie.UUCP (Clayton M. Elwell) Newsgroups: net.micro.pc,net.lang.pascal Subject: Review of Mystic Pascal for the IBM PC Message-ID: <806@osu-eddie.UUCP> Date: Thu, 14-Nov-85 18:10:48 EST Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.806 Posted: Thu Nov 14 18:10:48 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 15-Nov-85 05:38:13 EST Distribution: net Organization: Ohio State Univ., CIS Dept., Cols, Oh. Lines: 66 Xref: watmath net.micro.pc:5859 net.lang.pascal:372 Note: I have no connection with Mystic Canyon Software. This review is based solely on my impressions gained by using the product. Now that that's over with, on with the review. A week or so ago, someone posted a message to net.micro.pc that claimed, in effect, that Mystic Pascal was a scam. This had me a little worried, because I had just ordered it. Well, it arrived, two weeks to the day after I mailed my order. I opened it to find a manual and a disk containing Mystic Pascal Version 1.14. This is a pre-release; the first production version will be 1.5, which they claim will be out "in a few weeks". There are some features missing, but since they were honest about it I will not include them in this review. When I receive version 1.5 I will post a revised review. The manual is complete but minimal. I hope they flesh it out with more examples and (for professional software developers like me) some more technical details, but it does explain everything you need to know about using the system. It is 74 pages, most of that devoted to standard procedures and functions (1 per page). If you've seen the advertisements, you may have been skeptical of whether any product could do what they claim for $64.00. The answer is yes. Someone has put a LOT of work into it. Operation is extremely smooth. With a few days more practice, I expect it to be effortless. Statistics: ISO Standard Pascal Level 0 (Version 1.5) Compiles to 8086 machine code Two levels of optimization Full-screen Editor (WordStar/Turbo Style) Immediate execution mode Help windows on ISO Pascal, Editor, & Extensions Multi-tasking support with named message queues and arbitrary messages Program up to 1Mb, Data up to 1Mb Compiler/Editor Size: 67K Help file Size: 25K One word describes this system in general: SPEED. Mystic Pascal is an incremental compiler. You change five lines in a 2000 line program, it only recompiles those lines. It compiles the 7K sample program supplied with the package in 0.03 seconds. That is not a typo. 247 lines in 0.03 seconds. This evening I will benchmark execution speed and code size against MS-PASCAL and Turbo Pascal and post the results. The product has an extremely professional feel. Even as a prerelease, it is well worth the $64.00 purchase price just as a tutorial on using multi-tasking with message passing and as an example of the Right Way to write a commercial program for the IBM PC. If you develop software for the PC, you should buy this program, even if you hate Pascal (I did until now...). Stay tuned for benchmarks... -- -- Clayton Elwell Elwell@Ohio-State.CSNET Elwell%Ohio-State@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!elwell ----------------- "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads..."