From: ttak@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Tim Takahashi)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:18:55 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

In article <1992Sep15.124158.22972@NeoSoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <1992Sep15.074102.25760@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>> In article <YR3JPIG@taronga.com> peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> >An *IBM-PC*. I have three "PCs": two Amigas (a 3000 and a 1000) and a Mac.

>I used to have an IBM-PC clone. I spent 6 years programming for it. I still
>find myself forced to deal with them.
>
>Anyone who actually prefers that programming environment must have a non-
>technical reason for it. It has no technical merits whatsoever. If you want
>a technical discussion, I'll be happy to engage in one

OK. MSDOS (x86) vs. Mac vs. Unix

In my experience, the MSDOS platforms are a compromise between the mindless
turnkey nature of the Mac and the required systems support staff of the Unix
machines. I am intelligent enough to control my system configuration on
a command line system, but do not have the time to maintain (at least as
maintenence goes at UR) a networked Unix station.

Software-wise. Old PC software becomes obsolescent, it does not cause the
myriad of network problems that our Sun's keep demonstrating. 

User-wise. While the Sparc platform machines seem to have roughly 5-times
the computational speed of my 16Mhz 386sx/387 (I would assume similar horsepower
to a 50Mhz 486? But I stand to be corrected), the program development systems
are not up to the ease of use of something like QuickC. For *my* needs, the
debugging time and ease outweighs the raw horsepower.

My Mac experience has only strengthed my opinion of the machine as an
expensive toy for religious zealots. Performance of mid-line Macintosh
systems has always unimpressed me. The software quality, while visually
pleasant has not been as feature packed as many PC packages. The functionality
of the original 128k Mac was laughable, yet it sold strongly (again strengthing
impressions of religious, rather than functional preferences).
Wasn't it the case that you had to by a "Lisa" to develop Mac software, and
that "Lisa" was an entirely different machine than the $10000 "Lisa" of 1983?

The segmented memory architecture scheme has one strong side benefit.
Ease of relocating programs in memory - this made memory management an easy
task and allowed Microsoft to pull off some sense of multitasking with
Windows 1.0. My recollection was that this sort of dynamic memory management
was only the province of the VAXes at the time (1986). Certainly System 7
is the first mac-OS to offer this.

>I'm not the one who keeps pulling the debate off the technical merits of
>C versus assembler or IBM-PC clones versus computers shipped with real
>operating systems and decent hardware design. I do have a machine based
>on the IBM-PC hardware. It's not a PC, though: it's a timeshared UNIX box.
>Thanks to intel finally abandoning its attempt to force people to use
>segments, 

But why do you need to write 16Mb code? Could it be, perchance, inefficiently
written (or compiled?). Gosh I could fit alot of code into 512 bytes on my
Cosmac Elf? I still don't see why code was become so memory inefficient in
recent years?

I bought a copy of "The Beginner's Guide to Mathematica" the other week.
I about threw it away, it spent several paragraphs telling me how bad the
PC was and how great the Mac and Unix machines are. Damm, I'm running this
piece of poorly written buggy code on Sparc. This sort of attitude really
impresses me, not in a positive manner. Perhaps birds of a feather should
flock together. Have you entertained a job at Wolfram research?

tim
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers