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From: john13@garfield.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Initial Opinion of Amiga
Message-ID: <3024@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Nov-86 07:52:05 EST
Article-I.D.: garfield.3024
Posted: Wed Nov 19 07:52:05 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Nov-86 11:14:54 EST
References: <939@blia.BLI.COM>
Sender: perry@garfield.UUCP
Reply-To: john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell)
Organization: Memorial U. of Nfld. C.S. Dept., St. John's
Lines: 91
Summary: 

In article <939@blia.BLI.COM> forrest@blia.BLI.COM (Jon Forrest) writes:
[Intro deleted - about how he is reviewing an Amiga book without 
prior Amiga experience]

>Anyway, I started this project with an open mind. 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.

"Assessment" implies both experience and knowledge of what you are assessing.
You seem to have gotten hands-on experience without any kind of reference
work, and with no one to answer your questions. 30 seconds or so of give-and-
take with someone who knew about AmigaDos could have prevented the need for
your posting.
 
>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.

From the complaints you have later on, it seems like you haven't been a
typical user. I found answers to all of your problems on my own, without
any manuals, knowing only 1 or 2 commands initially. How did you get to
see all of these colours using AmigaDos alone?

>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 & Q are pretty arbitrary. Notice how both the S and Q keys are
close by the control key, allowing you to do flow control with two fingers
without stretching. The console handler on the Amiga stops output when you
type a character, and resumes when you either delete or do a return. The
rationale behind this is that you can interrupt output to type a complete
command. For pausing streams of text the easiest keys to use are the \
and backspace, resting one finger on one and one on the other.

>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.
>For example, running DIR is unacceptably slow. Yet, this is a very
>commonly run command. The CD command has the same problem.
 
"Dir" is kind of the odd command out. "List" (note similar to Unix ls) is
the preferred method of getting directories from the CLI. It doesn't
suffer from lack of speed, and when someone asks me how to get a directory
I tell them to forget about "dir". Also remember commands must be loaded
(as on Unix), which is time consuming. People who are up-to-date with Amigados
keep frequently used commands like "cd" in ram, from which they execute 
instantly.

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

True, this is poorly documented. But #? functions the same as * for
many commands, and ? I believe works the same way as you are used to.

>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?

The / functions the same way (except for specifying parent directories).
You obviously haven't had much experience on VMS, which uses similar
device assignments to df0:, etc. Many AmigaDos commands are more
reminiscent of VMS than Unix (ie delete, and using the "all" qualifier to
delete the directories).

>4. The amount of time it takes to respond to Control-C seems unpredictable.
>	This is true even though I was running a compile which does I/O
>	like crazy, which on the IBM is when Control-C's can be detected.
>
>Jon Forrest
>ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!forrest

Detecting control-c's is program specific - you can choose to let your
program be aborted or not. The Lattice Compiler I believe does not let
you break out in the middle with a control-c. But how can you base your
opinion of an entire operating system on the quirks of one program?
Methinks you are confusing AmigaDos with the programs that run under it
(all of the commands, for example, are programs, and so some behave
differently than others). Just because a system has the flexibility to
allow you to break the rules is no reason to condemn it!

Also I notice you make no mention of Intuition and using the icon/mouse based
system. When you say "user interface problems" remember that casual users
deal almost exclusively with this. Those who have graduated to the CLI *:^)
have usually read the Dos manuals, at least.

Disclaimer: These opinions are, of course, my own.

John