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From: fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: A couple of questions
Message-ID: <8609051618.AA03888@ames-nas.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 5-Sep-86 12:18:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames-nas.8609051618.AA03888
Posted: Fri Sep  5 12:18:45 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Sep-86 22:16:07 EDT
References: <8609050436.AA00672@ames-nas.ARPA>
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C:  GST C is suppose to be good/cheap, although it doesn't have floating
    point and some other features;  I haven't used it.
    Mark Williams appears to be good, and it's cheap around San Jose (:-)
    but I'm waiting until I can afford a hard disk before I buy it (:-(
    Beyond that there's Lattice, MegaMax, and the developers kit in
    aproximate increasing order of cost, though not necessarily quality.
    HIPPO C, (even if you can still find it) is not worth the money.

Modula-2:  The only choice appears to be TDI Modula-2.  I have a friend who
           has it, and says it is a reasonable implementation but the
	   manual is limited.

Pascal:  OSS Personal Pascal is the best choice here.  I have it, and
         have written GEM applications and a desk accessory with it,
	 and am in the middle of both MIDI software and a CHESS program.

     If you already know Pascal, or don't know any of the above
languages, I would recommend Personal Pascal highly.  Especially if you
don't have a lot of experience with GEM on the ST yet.  It's a fairly
full implementation of the ISO standard with a few useful extentions,
it has seperate compilation (mediocre) and a good library interface to
GEM along with reasonable documentation in the manual.

     So far I've only found one nasty bug, and its fairly easy to work
around.

     I would not recommend Pascal if you are already a C hacker and
don't know Pascal though.  In this case, you'll find the language very
restrictive.


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