Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!sun!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Feeping Creaturism
Summary: integration has some big advantages
Message-ID: <657@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 88 21:12:33 GMT
References: <655@nuchat.UUCP>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 56

In article <655@nuchat.UUCP>, peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
...
> I thought editor/assemblers went out back when 1K monitors stopped being
> state-of-the-art...
...
> Boycott integrated packages. What do you need that stuff for, anyway? The
> Amiga gives you an integrated *environment*...

I thought BATCH compilers went out of style a year or two ago (:-).
Integrated environments are all the rage in the IBM PC market now.  And
I think this is one case where the PC market is ahead of the Amiga.

Sure, the "different tools for different jobs" school has a lot to be
said for it.  I agree with the principle.  But until I can compile,
link, and load executable into my source level debugger in a second or
two with a standard editor-compiler-linker-debugger configuration, the
integrated systems are going to have an advantage that will be hard to
beat.  The separate tools are too inefficient; they repeat too much
work, reparsing, recompiling and relinking stuff that hasn't changed,
every time through the modyfy/test cycle.

There is a compromise position, though.  We could have IFF standards
for source and object code in different languages.  This standard would
keep the source and object together, and allow the editor to mark what
has changed, so the compiler can reuse the compiled code for procedures
that haven't changed.  Of course, they would have to handle changed
macros properly, which is not easy.  But it would save a lot of work.
This standard could also allow a format for a pre-parsed form.  This
would further speed up compilation.

Given this approach, you could supply your own editor, compiler, and
debugger, as long as they understood this format, and they would still
operate efficiently together.  Turnaround time would drop sharply.
Programmer productivity would climb dramatically.  More good public
domain and commercial software would be written, in a shorter period of
time.  Seeing the growing supply of good software for the Amiga, more
people would buy the machine.  Everyone would be happy, and all good
things would come to pass.

I've used a nice integrated Lisp environment with a structure editor,
compiler, interpreter, (source level) debugger, profiling tools, etc.
Changing code and retesting is almost instantaneous.  And I've been
programming the Amiga using emacs, a slow compiler, slow linker, and
many visits from the guru.  Turn around is a couple of minutes to try a
small experiment.  If the guru stops by, rebooting is another couple of
minutes.  I hope it's clear which I find to be the more productive
programming enviornment.

Of course the Lisp machine costs many times as much as my Amiga.  But
the "integrated" style of development, with fast turnaround times, is
certainly possible on the Amiga.  If the IBM PC can do it, the Amiga
certainly can!
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds