Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewse!macduff
From: macduff@cbnewse.ATT.COM (Roger R. Espinosa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: MPW wish list
Summary: MPW and Smalltalk and MacScheme and LSP
Message-ID: <12957@cbnewse.ATT.COM>
Date: 7 Feb 90 16:27:05 GMT
References: <71.25cdb0c2@waikato.ac.nz> <1990Feb6.065019.22828@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: The Rabbit Corps
Lines: 71

In article <1990Feb6.065019.22828@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) writes:
> I find this discussion a bit disturbing. There's a consistant thread
> that says, "Why isn't MPW more like unix?"
> 
> My question is, "Why is it so much like unix?"

Well, I grew up on UNIX, so I don't mind the UNIX-like nature of it. :-)

> 
> I've used more programming environments than I care to remember, and the
> LS environments are by far the biggest step forward in my experience.

This is a really subjective matter.  For me, I couldn't do a *thing* in 
the LSP environment.  Don't ask me why.  When I first booted up the thing
(and I *was* *really* excited about using LSP, let me tell you...), I thought
the editor was really nice, the way it automatically indented and high-lited
everything.  This, for some reason, started working against me: I found that
(for *me*. I'm not sure if this is reproduceable, or why I kept getting it)
if I kept doing a "semi-colon <return>", just like I'd do in vi, the editor
would stop accepting input after 66 lines or so.

> MPW doesn't add anything to the state of the art; the LS environments do

On the contrary.  I'm sitting here at work using UNIX and wishing that it
was more like MPW in some ways.  I really appreciate the MPW editor/windows,
which is very similar to MacScheme's environment.  

> for personal computing programming what the Mac did for the user. What I
> would like to know is how an environment of the LS variety could best be
> extended to provide the functionality of unix, without losing its low
> learning threshold. My first thought is inspiration is to be found more

I'm using TML Pascal with MPW right now, and I haven't had to open the MPW
manual beyond installing it, for most things.  The TML project menu takes care
of setting up the compilation lines for me, so there was no learning curve 
there.  In many ways, I don't think using TML is any different than using 
LSP (no real interfact change via menus), except I like the editor more. 

NOTE: I'm not trying to trash LSP.  My experiences with LSP were very 
frustrating to *me*, but I realize that a lot of the frustration was from me
not being to mesh with the LSP environment.

What makes MPW work for me, aside from the zillion and one times I"ve said
"I like the editor better," is that you can make different types of tools
(scripts, tools, and applications), so prototyping (seems to me) is easier,
and the tools can interact with each other.  It didn't seem that way (to me)
in LSP; I've never seen LSC.  

I think that to get the power of UNIX, you have to accept some sort of 
learning threshold.  Complex makefiles and the ilk don't translate well into
menus, I don't think. The "only-menu" mode may not be acceptable, because
it's too focused of an environment.

Smalltalk, and MacScheme (I'd guess) differ from traditional languages, though,
in that in these environments, there's no fine line between the environment
and the language: in MacScheme, for instance, many of the menu items were
merely calling MacScheme procedures.  MPW (or LSP/C...) aren't calling Pascal/
C/whatever procedures when you do their menu items, or commands.

> Philip Machanick
> philip@pescadero.stanford.edu


Roger
rre@ihlpn.ATT.COM

DISCLAIMER: Heck, I'm not trying to be an expert or anything on this subject.
Obviously, the LSP/C environemnts *must* work for people, or else there 
couldn't be nice big ads in MacWorld about all the products made with them. 
Believe me, when I look at the price of MPW, I wish it would work for me,
too :-(