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From: mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Information, please (MPW and Object Pascal)
Message-ID: <320@escher.tc.fluke.COM>
Date: Tue, 20-Jan-87 16:23:24 EST
Article-I.D.: escher.320
Posted: Tue Jan 20 16:23:24 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Jan-87 22:08:14 EST
References: <8017@tekecs.TEK.COM> <976@gould9.UUCP> <5306@clyde.ATT.COM>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 43

MPW was announced as being out of beta during the MacWorld expo, but
the new manuals had not yet been printed.  The only source is ADPA.
If you want a copy, you should get your order in to ADPA, as they will
likely be swamped (as usual).

MPW is an integrated development environment (with, unfortunately, a
new regular expression syntax).  The main advantage to MPW is that you
can use Object Pascal and MacApp.  Object Pascal is an extended Pascal
(blessed by Wirth) with messages, but no other object-oriented
extensions.  MacApp is the ultimate empty Macintosh application, and
is written in Object Pascal.  It has been estimated that, once
learned, Object Pascal and MacApp enable a finished application to be
developed in one-fourth the time of traditional procedural languages.

Object Pascal and MacApp are sold separately from MPW, so the total
cost is more like $300-400 (I didn't pay attention to the release
prices; well worth it in my estimation).  There is also a C compiler
and Object Assembler, and all three languages can be mixed (though C
has no way to receive messages; but you can call C from an Object
Pascal method).

I have some problems with the lack other object-oriented extensions to
Object Pascal.  The official line from Apple is that it confuses the
poor programmer.  I feel that learning to program based on data
objects that can respond to methods is what slows most programmers
down, and obviously Object Pascal still requires that.  Once this is
mastered, the more "advanced" concepts can be easily learned.  After
all, aren't programmers supposed to be expert users?

Eventually, you may be able to program in Object Pascal without MPW (I
understand there is a version of TML Pascal that supports messages,
though it won't currently compile MacApp).  And there are translators
in the works that may allow using MacApp from other object-oriented
languages, such as Smalltalk.  But if you don't want to wait for
products that may never appear, MPW is the only choice.



Brian McElhinney
Software Guy
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
uw-beaver!fluke!mce
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