Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site 3comvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!mykes From: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: More unwanted opinions on Amiga DOS Message-ID: <373@3comvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 02:45:42 EST Article-I.D.: 3comvax.373 Posted: Wed Jan 22 02:45:42 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jan-86 08:30:34 EST References: <1041@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> Reply-To: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA Lines: 61 For those of you using Lattice 'C' out there, I made the followig observation today. The following function compiles into 100 bytes of code on the IBM PC (you can bet the 68000 requires 150 bytes, based upon the size of LC1 and LC2 on both machines): encrypt(encrp, mask) char encrp[], mask[]; { int i; for (i=0; i<6; i++) encrp[i] ^= mask[i]; } Just for yuks, I coded the same thing by hand in assembler and it requied 12 bytes. The best strategy for programming the Amiga might be to make libraries and write small front end programs. This will share code and will reduce memory requirements. Not only is ALINK a memory hog, but it is slow. It is not smart enough to read in it's libraries all at once, or it might be faster. Too bad Amiga.lib is 74K, or it might be faster, too. I have watched ALink run whle the workbench showed dynamically how it used the ram. Alink actually used more ram after it started writing out the executable file (?!?). Before putting any blame on the folks at Amiga for the woes of AmigaDos, it might be better to keep in mind that AmigaDos was written by MetaComco NOT AMIGA. Amiga is responsible for everything from Trackdisk.device down, and everything I see there is super! Intuition, on the highest level, also seems to be pretty darn good. What Amiga can do to make AmigaDos better might be limited by the software that requires the standard AmigaDos startup stuff. I am no Unix expert, but aren't ports and pipes (between processes) the same (sorry, but I am ignorant if they aren't). If you refer to pipes on the command line, I am glad tht Amiga left them out rather than tying up RAM or using floppies for the piped data. I have these pipes available to me under MS DOS all day, but I rarely use them and see no absolute need for them. Someone posted a source to unix-style ls for the Amiga, including wildcards, etc. So who cares if the Amiga doesn't do wildcards nice, it does now!! This ls also sorts the directories by date and time and alphabetically too! This ought to make the disk directory format less of an issue (although it does take a while to enumerate (expand) wildcards). Consider this - the Amiga is making a new standard that in most ways is better than the old ones (unix and MS Dos included here). To me it is no worse than Unix to program for, and light years better than MS DOS. Given time, the Amiga will mature into something that might make us all (except for the religious) forget unix. The only problems seem to be software, and software is real cheap and can be easily replaced. Compared to the 8 bit machines, the Amiga is a godsend. Compared to the IBM PC and the Atari ST (I have not heard about any standard programatic interfaces or a standard language or anything for it) and the Mac, the Amiga is a DREAM to program on. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!