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From: ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Programming MS-Windows vs. Amiga (Re: resource tracking)
Message-ID: <261@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz>
Date: 5 Mar 90 07:11:43 GMT
References: <1165@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <5214@sugar.hackercorp.com> <23118@usc.edu> <5219@sugar.hackercorp.com> <23157@usc.edu>
Sender: news@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz
Reply-To: ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mq.oz (Ian Farquhar)
Organization: Macquarie University, Sydney
Lines: 41

In article <23157@usc.edu> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>In article <5219@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>MS Windows is widely
>>regarded as an incredibly hard environment to program in 
>
>I'll get flamed for this, but here it goes. I've done both.  I found MS-Windows
>at least 10 times easier to program than the Amiga. And there are a variety 
>of reasons for this, but four of them really come to mind:
>
>1. avaliability of working dialog/gadget/widget editors. This cuts down
>   user interface design and implementation by at least a factor of 10.
>   [please don't tell me that power windows is a good interface editor.
>   it's not.]

I thoroughly agree!  However, one of the things against the dialog
editor (which is more a fault of windows in general), is that the choice
of gadgets is limited.  At least the Amiga gives you much greater
flexibility there: it is just unused.  What I would like to see is an
editor that allows full intuition support, with a decent image editor.

>3. 99% of the MS-Windows calls use "internal" data structures that you
>  cannot poke at directly. This is compared to the Amiga system in which
>  practically everything is "public", even things that shouldn't be (remember
>  all those IntuitionBase fields that were supposed to be private?).  This
>  results in less run-time crashes than on the Amiga.  I think this was a real
>  win for MS-Windows and I wish the Amiga was designed similarly.  We would
>  have less "hacks" and more stable and crash-free programs.

I hate this.  Look at the size of the Windows executable!  It is
enormous, mostly because of this fact.  It also results in a dramatic
loss of performance under some conditions.  I'd rather have the Amiga's
nice and clean system interface, thank you.

"AI is also an acronym for Artificial Ignorance"

Ian Farquhar                      Phone : (612) 805-7420
Office of Computing Services      Fax   : (612) 805-7433
Macquarie University  NSW  2109   Also  : (612) 805-7205
Australia                         Telex : AA122377

ACSNet ifarqhar@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz.au  ifarqhar@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au
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