Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!ncar!ames!pacbell!att-ih!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsp!gillies
From: gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: A/UX window systems, Mac toolbo
Message-ID: <76000174@uiucdcsp>
Date: 25 Mar 88 07:07:00 GMT
References: <8449@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU>
Lines: 30
Nf-ID: #R:eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU:8449:uiucdcsp:76000174:000:1479
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Mar 25 01:07:00 1988


I believe that virtual memory does very little to solve the memory
headaches for developers.  As a former developer, I believe these
headaches are intrinsic to writing bullet-proof software.  We spent
half the time alpha testing our machine (with VM) in unusual situations
when some resource (RAM, Disk) was unreasonably low.  The software had
to keep working.

Even if you macintosh has a 5 megabyte VM space, it is still necessary
to write software that performs gracefully when the machine exhausts
all 5 megs.  This is part of writing professional software in general.
Your software should also do something reasonable when the disk runs
out of free pages.  Professional developers worry about such things.
Yes I know it's a pain, but it separates the men from the boys in
software design.

Most software written for UNIX is very unprofessional and I'm not
suprised source licenses are so cheap.  When a UNIX box begins to run
out of VM, all hell breaks loose an many programs crash inexplicably.
The same thing happens when the machine exhausts disk space.

There would be hell to pay if this happened to a customer running an
editor they paid real $$$ for.  If he lost work because the editor
crashed, I would be inclined to believe he deserved his money back.

Today's Mac+ does give you 800K of RAM to play with.  That's a lot
more generous than the typical maxxed-out PC, XT, or AT.

Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
            {gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu}