Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!decwrl.dec.com!joel From: joel@decwrl.dec.com (Joel McCormack) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Window systems should not be substitutes for decent environments Keywords: X11 NeWS C interpreters threads Message-ID: <2405@bacchus.dec.com> Date: 7 Jan 90 21:58:55 GMT References: <4458@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <8912162135.AA03025@iris.rand.org> <4290@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <4392@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Reply-To: joel@decwrl.dec.com (Joel McCormack) Organization: DEC Western Software Laboratory Lines: 19 From the types of arguments offered for NeWS recently in this group, I must conclude that you guys all write ``real'' programs in Forth, yes? It's interpreted, extensible, uses RPN, etc. No, you probably all program in C, and many would defend its use technically (ugh). (I can't argue with using C for sales and lots of other reasons...but then, we're talking technical here, right?) A window system is not the place to put support for dynamic loading, concurrency, OO programming, etc. Instead, a window system should be able to use all these things if they are provided by a decent environment. Most of the points about NeWS's ``technical superiority'' are really complaints about UNIX and C in disguise. You should certainly complain that your programming language and environment doesn't give you support for the kinds of things you want to do, but don't get confused and complain that the lack of such support is a problem inherent to X. - Joel McCormack (decwrl!joel, joel@decwrl.dec.com)