Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!tank!nucsrl!bob
From: bob@eecs.nwu.edu (Bob Hablutzel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Rooms? (Was: Finder Improvements)
Message-ID: <10330083@eecs.nwu.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 88 14:17:55 GMT
References: <6217@netnews.upenn.edu>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 39


> On a slightly different note: One thing that really annoys me about the Mac
> is that it has taken Apple over 4 years to get the Mac to where the Lisa
> was when it was first introduced! The Lisa had only 512K of memory, yet
> supported a desktop much like MULTIFINDER now. Now, however, if you have
> 1 MEG of RAM or less, don't even think about it. The same is becoming true
> for many applications. Are people just getting "sloppy" about memory usage,
> or is there something I'm missing? Admittedly, the Lisa had a limited base
> of programs, but then again, no development environment existed for it.

Personally, I think there are several reasons for memory use increasing:

Programs are more complex: Consider FullWrite, XPress, etc. Nothing of this
complexity exists for the Lisa. Obviously, the more a program does, the more
code is needed to implement this complexity.

Programs are sloppier about memory: With the complexity of programs increasing,
it is getting harder and harder to watch every piece of memory. Especially
with the (unique?) error reporting on the Mac.

Finally, and I'm going to get flamed right and left for this, but here we go:
Most applications are written in high level languages these days, by teams of
programmers. I'm sorry, and you can disagree, but there is _no way_ that 
high level code can match the size and speed compactness of assembly language
programming. This has nothing to do with using tricks of the chip, or black 
magic, but because high level languages require support routines and the
like which assembly language code can avoid.

(For example: I just stopped work on a mail project - it communicated between
VAX Mail and a Macintosh, with a true Mac interface, printing, cut/paste (no
undo), graphic interface, etc, etc. It was written completely in assembler,
both on the VAX and the Mac. Consider it to be 85% done. Final code size:
26K on the VAX, and 40K on the Mac. Needless to say, it worked just fine
with MultiFinder).

Oops. Didn't quite mean to go on like that. Well, the above is my opinion, and
I tend to get overworked about it sometimes. Sorry about that.

Bob Hablutzel	BOB@NUACC.ACNS.NWU.EDU