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From: higgin@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Paul Higginbottom GUEST)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Initial Opinion of Amiga
Message-ID: <1000@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Nov-86 18:58:34 EST
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1000
Posted: Mon Nov 17 18:58:34 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Nov-86 03:28:50 EST
References: <939@blia.BLI.COM>
Reply-To: higgin@cbmvax.UUCP (Paul Higginbottom GUEST)
Organization: PDH, Inc.
Lines: 91

In article <939@blia.BLI.COM> forrest@blia.BLI.COM (Jon Forrest) writes:
>I recently received an Amiga on loan from a computer book
>publishing company in order to test programs from a new
>Amiga book I am doing a technical review of. I'm doing
>the review even though I told them that I don't know anything
>about Amiga's.
>
>Anyway, I started this project with an open mind.

Despite seemingly having a seeming bias toward UNIX/MSDOS (see below).

>Now, after about 2 weeks of experience on the Amiga I thought I'd give
>an accessment of the Amiga from the point of view of an experienced
>computer programmer, although one without any Amiga experience or knowledge.
>
>My opinion is that, with the exception of being able to display
>many colors, the Amiga is pretty dismal. I deliberatly didn't look
>into the internal aspects of AmigaDos but base my opinion on
>user interface problems. I should also note that I mainly use
>the CLI interface.

Despite the fact that most typical users will use WorkBench mainly?

>The first thing I noticed is that the Amiga doesn't use Control-S
>and Control-Q to stop and start output to the screen. Control-S
>does work but only carriage return seems to resume output. The
>XON/XOFF protocol is so common that I would hope that there is some
>good reason why Amiga doesn't use it.

Sure - not EVERYONE knows about CTRL-S/CTRL-Q being a defacto standard
on terminals.

Also, CLI blocks output of any program when the user types practically
any characters (which for some reason I DON'T understand includes control
characters) and resumes output when those typed characters are deleted,
or the user hits RETURN.  I would say this is a little simpler and more
obvious than CTRL-S/CTRL-Q for the user who is NOT an 'experienced
programmer'.

>The next thing that bothered my is that the Amiga is SLOOOOOOW in
>performing tasks that a standard speed IBM PC can do much better.

This is too sweeping a statement!  And you've judged the Amiga too
quickly, and too narrowly.

>For example, running DIR is unacceptably slow.

AmigaDOS is optimized to accessing a file quickly (via hashing) rather
than sequentially determining the contents of a directory, but I agree,
it is intolerably slow.  However, the roots of AmigaDOS were developed
long before the Amiga existed, and seems to work well on a hard disk.

>What follows is a short list of other annoying features of the Amiga:
>1. The lack of wild card characters is a bother.

Read the AmigaDOS User's Manual - there's tons of pattern matching;
it's built into the disk resident commands, rather than the CLI itself.

>2. I couldn't find the command for removing a directory.

Try DELETE.  If you want to delete a directory that isn't empty, use the
ALL keyword at the end.

>3. The file system is very similar to Unix and MS-DOS. Why couldn't
>	they use the same pathname syntax of one of these?

BUT THEY HAVE - A: B: C: on MSDOS seems similar to device names under
AmigaDOS - DF0: DF1:, RAM:, etc.  Under UNIX, users rarely have to deal
with "devices" directly, so I don't think the comparison is valid.
Also, "/" is MORE compact than ".." under UNIX, and I really like it
despite being a UNIX fan.

>4. The amount of time it takes to respond to Control-C seems unpredictable.

It's a multi-tasking machine remember, and it also depends on the program,
the compiler, and what other programs are running.

>When I read other people's submissions complaining about systems I know
>something about I often think to myself that the person who wrote
>the article was obviously suffering from a severe case of cranial-anal
>inversion. But, being in the same situation is a very enlightening
>experience.

I trust you are now inverted the right way up.

>Jon Forrest
>ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!forrest

	Paul Higginbottom

Disclaimer: I work for myself and my opinions are my own.