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From: chymes@fribourg.csmil.umich.edu (Charles Hymes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Programming books
Message-ID: <1990Feb8.201954.18643@csmil.umich.edu>
Date: 8 Feb 90 20:19:54 GMT
References: <498@unicorn.WWU.EDU>
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Organization: The Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory
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I have Programing the Amiga (in C), Both volumes of Amiga Programers handbook,
 RKM for 1.3, and the complete origional white set of the Kernal manuals. Throw
 in the Manx and Lattice C manuals, and ya got a lot of docs. Guess what,
I need ALL of them. Programing the Amiga is the only one that even attempted to
 take a Tutorial approch, and given the complexity of the environment, this is 
necesary. Programming the Amiga is very limited in scope however. The Amiga 
Programmers Manuals are great collections of vital info, but they have two
critical flaws. First, in any given topic, no information is given on how to
program with the functions and structures discribed. Its like tring to learn to
drive from your cars shop repair manual. But most damageing to the books, is its
complete lack of info on AmigaDos. Without this info, it is impossible to program
the amiga to do any meaningful applications. You cant do any real IO, or even know
anything about the envireonment your program is running in.
The official Docs generaly have the same problems as the Amiga Programers 
Handbook, but it is much better about real programming information. But still far
too little about how to really get things done. The AmigaDos manual is indespenc-
able, but unfortuanately, the one I have is for 1.1. All the structures are
 obsolete.  Also, the book is fillws with traps like not discribing the exact 
parameters of the AmigaDos functions, or its return values. 
As far as Ive seen, there is no good source of "all you need to know
to write real programs on the amiga". Stuff like the fast file system, programming
with shell variables, paths, real exec programming, etc can only be obtained by
begging those who know to spill there secrets. Not even experience will help, 
cause if you do it wrong, it just crashes, end of story.
Probably the best solution is to get all the stuff from the developers conferences
and put it into a reference form. Then get all the reference material, and make
a real tutorial on how to program all the aspects of the amiga, and how to
put it together in a real program. Hey, they do it for IBM APPLE SUN and such,
why not for the Amiga.