Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!peter From: peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Feeping Creaturism Message-ID: <670@nuchat.UUCP> Date: 21 Feb 88 03:09:13 GMT References: <655@nuchat.UUCP> <657@sandino.quintus.UUCP> Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx Lines: 115 In article <657@sandino.quintus.UUCP>, pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes: > 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 (:-). I'm sure they went out of style, but then "in style" is usually not a good reason for buying a product. After all, the IBM-PC is much more "in style" than the Amiga... > 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. I think you're wrong... let's see why... > 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. Let's turn that around... But until I can *enter the environment*, *load the source*, compile, link, and load executable without having to read all my source files off the disk, the modular systems are going to have an advantage that's hard to beat. The integrated systems are too inefficient; they require too much stuff to be resident in RAM through your whole modify-crash-debug cycle. They require you to reload the system after the crash stage. Modular tools work very well with this simple-yet-briliant tool called "make"... Of course if you *have* the RAM you can always keep your whole modular environment in there. With VD0: you don't even have to reload it after a crash. > 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. Why reinvent the wheel? Make already does a good job of this. > Of course, they would have to handle changed macros properly, which > is not easy. But it would save a lot of work. Easy as pie: module1.o: module1.c macro1.h macro2.h cc +P module1.c module2.o: module2.c macro1.h cc +P module2.c > This standard could also allow a format for a pre-parsed form. This > would further speed up compilation. Manx already supports this, you can precompile all your header files and use make to properly maintain that as well. > 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. Now why didn't I think of that? > 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. Hey, I'm working as hard as I can :->. > I've used a nice integrated Lisp environment with a structure editor, > compiler, interpreter, (source level) debugger, profiling tools, etc. Lisp is a whole different kind of flying altogether. Could you also use C, Fortran, and Modula-2 on the same machine? > 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. Ever worked with UNIX? :-> Or do you just read news here? It's a whole different kind of flying altogether. > 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! I haven't seen an integrated environment on the PC that was worth the disk it came on. Turbo Pascal and M2SDS Modula-2 were disasters for all but the smallest project. It's interesting to note that Turbo-C is *not* an integrated package... Perhaps you should try the Manx environment. -- -- a clone of Peter (have you hugged your wolf today) da Silva `-_-' -- normally ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter U -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.