From: bstone@acs.ucalgary.ca (Blake Stone)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: is NT really NEW technology?
Keywords: NT Unix OS2 DOS Blither
Date: 16 Aug 92 02:51:28 GMT
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

> Wow... I'll take another look at NextStep... I believe it's
> probably still a bit behind NT, but clearly it is a contender.

Ahem.  Yah, I'd agree that that base level OS services may give
NT a bit of an edge over NeXTstep in some areas, but it is still
far from being "ahead" of NeXTstep in the general sense.
NeXTstep's strongest area is not its UNIX implementation, but
rather what it provides on top of that!

This not being the appropriate forum for such a discussion, feel
free to write me private mail to continue the discussion.  I'm
actually quite interested in finding out more about NT since by
the time Cairo arrives it may become a serious contender!

> Question... what is NeXT doing wrong?  With features like that
> they ought to be kicking ass in the Unix market

UNIX weenies aren't interested in usability, and tend to be
turned off by NeXT's "we don't care about UNIX, we care about
what you can do with NeXTstep" attitude.

> Is NeXTstep 3.0 for 386/486 out now?

No.  NeXTstep 3.0 for the NeXT hardware is due out in about a
week (I'm running their final beta now), NeXTstep 486 should be
released about the end of the year (Before NT.  Wink wink nudge
nudge :-) ).

> Microsoft pointed out at the developers conference, handheld
> devices 2-3 years from now will easily be capable of running
> NT.

It isn't a matter of capability, it's a matter of desirability.
I can't imagine wanting to run NeXTstep, Windows, the Mac OS, you
name it on a pen based system.  Time will tell but I think it's a
different set of tasks and requires a different attitude.

> Sorry, you're wrong here, you probably just haven't seen the
> information yet.  As a part of Win32, Microsoft is bringing out
> Win32s which is a DLL you can distribute with you app that is
> for Windows 3.1 users that will allow an Windows NT binary to
> run under Windows 3.1.  The only caveat is that not all NT
> features will be available and thus you must code a bit more
> carefully.

> As to source code compatibile... indeed they are... Microsoft
> has gone to great pains to make it possible to use one source
> code set that will go both to Windows 3.X and NT.

Ooops... I was aware of that, the point was that Win NT sure as
heck isn't source compatible with apps the way they WERE written.
Not that I think anyone would be crazy enough to write NEW apps
with the limitations of a segmented architecture!  The ability to
write source compatible apps is important.

> It is true that existing Windows 3.X apps will need some minor
> changes, but they are reasonably minor.

Errr... I don't share your optimism.  Microsoft themselves (who
know NT as well as anybody) pointed out that porting a 25,000
line app took a day to compile cleanly, several days before it
would display at all, a week before significant functions worked
and gave no indication of when it was FINISHED!

On the other hand, porting Adobe Illustrator from the existing
NeXTstep to the "portable" NeXTstep 3.0 running on a 486 took
(get this) 3 hours... just the recompile time.  You can bet that
once NT is running on a system with a different byte order that a
whole new crop of incompatibilities will leap to the forefront!
(In existing apps... new apps shouldn't be that presumtuous).

> Does Soft PC come with the base package?

Point taken.  The answer for NeXTstep 486 is still far from
clear.  Maybe?  NeXT was still looking at the issue last time I
heard about it.

> Really, unloadable too?  I'm not talking about at boot time.
> I'm impressed if they've done this.

Yah.  I load / unload drivers all the time for MIDI, sound
compression, X.25 support, SLIP support etc...

> All I/O can be done asynchronusly... i.e. you issue the async
> write, continue along in your program, and be signaled when the
> system is ready for more data.  Berkeley-based Unixes have this
> feature.

Sure, you can request that all I/O be done async... does it
always actually happen?  And yes, NeXTstep is Berkeley based.

> What I mean here is that most device drivers can be written
> such that there is one set of source files, and that driver
> (except for a small header file) will work on all platforms.

Again.  All NT platforms.  Not ALL platforms.  I believe the same
to be true of NeXTstep, a quick review of the device driver docs
reveals no warnings about doing anything differently on different
platforms.

> All in all NextStep holds up pretty well against NT.  However
> it's definitely the only Unix that does... you other Unix
> platform users out there... come on you babies!!! I want to
> fight against the unarmed! :-)

Go for it!  And good luck... lets bring a decent platform to the
world, SysVR4.2 doesn't exactly cut it where I'm concerned it's
missing too much beyond the low tech level.

Blake