Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpcea!hpcilzb!tedj
From: tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: LightSpeed C gripes
Message-ID: <870110@hpcilzb.HP.COM>
Date: 15 Jan 88 17:56:45 GMT
References: <10928@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Organization: HP Design Tech Center - Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 35


I *LIKE* LSC a lot, but I can empathize (sp?) with your complaints.

>[complaints about documentation, and how much better it is for IBM PC products]

Learning to program the Mac is a mega-huge bootstrapping process.  It reminded
me of my first year at MIT.  :-)  
The version of that manual I have says that they assume you ALREADY KNOW:  
	(1) how to write in C, and 
	(2) how to program the Mac Toolbox.  

The best book on how to use the ToolBox with C that I have ever seen is 
"Programming the Mac ToolBox with C", written by 3 guys from BMUG.  Unfortunately, 
it is out of print.  It also uses another C compiler (==> slightly different syntax),
but this wasn't a major problem.  
I also found it EXTREMELY helpful to order a dozen or so back issues of MacTutor
from a year or so ago.  There were lots of examples of how to program with LSC.

>[Complaints about the editor]

I *LIKE* the editor because it is blindingly fast with huge files.  I use it 
almost daily when I have to edit the header statements out of downloaded BinHex
files.  Beats using MacWrite by several orders of magnitude.  Some more command key
equivalents for cursor control would be nice though. 

My main complaint about LSC is its lack of a symbolic debugger, and the bugs
with the stdio routines (which are used if you want to port a Unix command line 
interface program to your Mac).

-Ted

-----------------------------------------------------
Ted C. Johnson
Hewlett-Packard
Design Technology Center