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From: olson@harvard.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Red Ryder 7.0 & Other Terminal Programs
Message-ID: <678@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 09:59:31 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.678
Posted: Tue Feb  4 09:59:31 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 08:12:55 EST
References: <338@infsc3.hatpoly.UUCP> <8563@amdcad.UUCP> <164@uvicctr.UUCP> <872@umn-cs.UUCP> <413@ism780c.UUCP>
Reply-To: olson@harvard.UUCP (Eric olson)
Organization: Aiken Comp Lab, Harvard
Lines: 35

In article <872@umn-cs.UUCP> waddingt@umn-cs.UUCP (Jake Waddington ) writes:

>It is a good complete program with very good support. Note the current
>version is 2.00 not 7.0, that is to say Mr. Abelbeck can get it right
>the first time. We use VersaTerm in Our lab to talk to our 2.9 Unix system

Then, In article <413@ism780c.UUCP> tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) writes:

>If he got it right the first time, why isn't it 1.00??????

Now, I write:

Here here!  Not only that, but considering that VersaTerm's version number
has three significant digits, it is possible that at version 2.00 it has
gone through 200 revisions!  Red Ryder, on the other hand, has two sig.
digits in its version number, and presumably may have gone through 70
revisions.

No, I am NOT being serious here, and I hope Jake wasn't either.  It makes
no sense to judge a program based on its version number.  I should point
out that I don't use either of these programs (I use MacTerminal), so I
really don't know which is better designed, supported, or any of those other
things that really DO make a difference.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Red Ryder has had many TOTAL
rewrites (according to some recent InfoWorld article), and we all (well,
most would agree, anyway) know that this leads to better programs BUT
requires mucho time.  Most commercial products don't get developed that
way (this is not to say, however that VersaTerm did not-- I don't know).

I hope I've included enough self-humbling statements in this to avoid
being flamed at.  I just didn't think it was fair to compare programs
by version number.  Please, no extended exchanges on this.

-Eric.