Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!bucsb!crewman
From: crewman@bucsb.UUCP (JJS)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Software costs
Message-ID: <2526@bucsb.UUCP>
Date: 9 May 89 19:41:46 GMT
References: <8905021217.AA08520@nh.cs.wm.edu> <98@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU> <102@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU> <3263@cs.dal.ca>
Reply-To: crewman@bucsb.bu.edu
Followup-To: comp.sys.atari.st
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 22

In article <3263@cs.dal.ca> bill@biomel.UUCP, biomel@cs.dal.CA writes:
>
>From a programming point of view, MS-DOS is hard!!!  All that
>segmentation crap, graphics at the lowest level, and so on.  Give me GEM
>any time!
>

Nothing against the ST (I have one!), but with a decent PC C compiler
(Microsoft or Turbo) and a graphics library such as MetaWINDOW, a programmer
can virtually forget about Intel/MSDOS difficulties.  Most C compilers
will give you Unix-like file control under MSDOS, and MetaWINDOW, I must say
seems to be more comprehensive than VDI.  And if you've got to have windows,
GEM is available for the PC, as well as Microsoft Windows, whose applications
are truly multitasking.

Ooops, I forgot.  By the time you shell out for the Microsoft Windows Software
Development Kit (and the Microsoft C Compiler), ease of programming will be
the least of your problems :-)

So ST/GEM still remains the best value.  But we all knew that.

		-- JJS