Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!necntc!dandelion!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Reports from DevCon: days 1 & 2
Message-ID: <6744@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 2 May 88 22:25:13 GMT
References: <30512@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 75

kim@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) wrote:
>[ Everything in this line may be wrong!    (with apologies to Richard Bach) ]

Along with many things in the article.  Seems Mr. Conlow read the
program and reported that.  Some things just didn't happen the way he
reported them.  For example, Rob Peck wasn't there, and Dale wasn't
part of the Copper talk, just JimM.

Some of my impressions, off the cuff:

	The conference notes were about 3 inches thick, single sided.
	  Loads of useful information.
	Everyone who was at Monterey (sp?) said this DevCon was
	  a WHOLE LOT better.
	Randy Spencer's machine taped Yar's death while we were
	  all out partying with Discovery Software, then it was shown
	  a few times (at least 2.5) on the big screen.
	Dave Haynie showed up with a 68030 board for the A2000,
	  and somebody ran the C64 emulator on it when he
	  wasn't looking.  Called it the 64030.  :-)
	All companies there got a KS1.3 ROM.
	Lots of companies were looking for Amiga programmers.
	Leo ran an Anim that said "OS/2 ==> HALF-OS" ...  CBM let it
	  run for a while :-)  After that, Leo ran his Stars program
	  whevener somebody let him near a machine.
	Dave Haynie won the Usenet BOING award.
	Fred Fish won an award from CBM.  It was the first ever
	  publicly presented "fatter Agnus".  Six other companies
	  got them too (picked by lottery).
	RJ Mical is expecting his second child.
	Tom Rockiki tried to describe Breshnev's line draw algorithm.
	  Having failed that, he showed us his terrific error
	  checking routine in BlitLab 1.3.  :-)
	Mike (Powered by Cyberpunk M&Ms in training) Smithwick had
	  Leo read the beta version of his new StarChip EnterBoing
	  adventure at the USENET meeting.  Dale kneeling before Leo?
	At the USENET meeting: CBMers Lauren, DaveB, Dale, Bryce,
	  George (grr), Dave (boinger) Haynie, SteveB (?) and maybe
	  more (I didn't get a lot of sleep this past weekend, kids).
	Perry & Eric advanced the concept of Amiga Working Groups,
	  sort of like technical steering committees to hammer out
	  ideas.  Just about everybody liked the idea, including CBM.
	Randell Jesup was hired by CBM.
	Nobody wanted to talk much about IPC, multiple ports or
	  the ultimate user interface.  Well, everybody wanted to,
	  but didn't want to get into flame wars, ala USENET.
	  Joanne Dow kept saying "Post it on BIX!  Post it on BIX!"
	Chuck McManis had a great Intuition programmer's library;
	  showed you how to do everything.  Commercial product.
	During the "beyond 1.4" talk, about 6 presenters brought
	  up ARexx.
	Five disks were handed out: WB 1.3 gamma 7, WB Extras gamma 7,
	  DevCon 1, 2 & 3 examples source disks.  Hedley also gave
	  out a disk on the A2024 monitor if you went to his talk.
	The SCA virus was in the computer room, on at least 6 A500s.
	  All the Fish and Amicus disks were there for copying.  The
	  computer room was open from 7pm-5am Fri & Sat night, and
	  was full until around 3am Saturday morning.  And yes, people
	  did get kicked out at 5am when they closed the room.
	Translator.library is being rewritten for 1.4.
	Workbench is coming out of the ROMs for 1.4.
	FFS will be in ROM in 1.4.
	Jim Goodnow of Manx, true to form, was playing with his
	  compiler source (version 4.0) around 3am Saturday morning.
	  He's got a flickerfixer too.
	Leo suggested CBM throw away Exec/DOS and start over.
	SubLogic demanded CBM recode everything in assembler.

...and many, many more things.  There were just loads of things going
on, all at once.  Everyone will have their own recollections and
things that stand out to them.  I think a good time was had by all!

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page