Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!msdsws.DEC.COM!secrist
From: secrist@msdsws.DEC.COM ("Richard C. Secrist")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Languages for an average //e ?
Message-ID: <8905241352.AA13287@decwrl.dec.com>
Date: 24 May 89 13:52:09 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 54


	I'm addressing myself to all those ][ faithful programmers
	out there who haven't made the jump to a GS or elsewhere.
	I am not bemoaning any other class of Apple user, so please
	don't flame me.  The Apple ][ family is a many splendored
	thing -- more power to everybody, whatever their purpose...

	If you're a programmer though, and you're going to stay with
	a 128K //e and a couple of floppies for whatever reason, the
	show really passes you by in terms of descent languages and
	stuff.  If I wanted to spend bucks on hard disks and tons of
	RAM there seem to be plenty language environments and stuff
	that'd do okay.  Mine is but an average box, and I'm hoping
	there is some neat language or tool that's passed me by
	that doesn't need 4 gigbytes online, or a GS.

	I've been a programmer forever, and have been feeding myself
	this way for the last 10 years.  I have grow out of Applesoft,
	nice as it is for that sort of thing.  So I tried Aztec C --
	a nice package, but a dog to run on floppies.  I moved on
	to CP/M -- tons of nice languages here, but they're all relative
	to the Z-80 coprocessor card and you lose the ability to do
	native graphics and things like that, and that loses.  Well you
	don't lose them, but it's quite a long way around to get it to
	work.  So I tried native FORTH.  FORTH wins pretty big, but
	most of the implementations I've seen use direct physical
	i/o to the disk and don't support anything, let alone ProDOS.
	Even nicer FORTHs still don't to record I/O right to text files.
	GraFORTH is pretty cool, does wonderful native graphics and
	sound, and compiles to 6502 code executables... but InSoft
	went bankrupt before ProDOS was even let out of the stable.
	So really nice FORTH hasn't made it to ProDOS yet for the //e,
	and the GS killed any hope of software developement by commercial
	developers.  To digress, I tried the UCSD environent for a couple
	of years.  I didn't like being trapped in the menus, even if they
	worked pretty well... and I never did like Pascal through v1.1.
	The Fortran-77 was okay, since I speak that all day at work, but
	it was still UCSD and only a subset Fortran.  Sigh.  Assembler
	is great, but my productivity sucks.  I guess there was a Pascal
	v1.3 and maybe an Instant Pascal -- maybe those are better.
	The idea of compiled BASICs makes me wince.  So what now ?

	I try to paw through what is left of Apple magazines, and at
	the level I'm at it all seems like a bunch of Appleworks drivel
	or other luser toys I could care less about.  Don't get me
	wrong -- that's fine for those people and good at it and all that,
	it's just no what I'm after.  I know -- so upgrade my system.
	I have many other systems already to suit my many purposes...
	I was just hoping for something for an average Apple.  Is
	there anybody out there who has found something neat who understands
	what I'm talking about ?

	Thanks,
	rcs.