From: mrmike@michelotti.ae.ge.com ("Mr. Mike" Passaretti)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipsets
Date: 28 Dec 92 20:36:29 GMT
Reply-To: Mike Passaretti <passaretti@crd.ge.com>
Organization: GE Aircraft Engines, Cincinnati OH


# In message <1992Dec28.171101.14664@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>, 
# jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:

jerry> My OS/2 programming experience is mostly with
jerry> application-level software using the Presentation
jerry> Manager, but I've read a lot about OS/2 design.

Right.  We're hearing discussion on what makes an OS from an
applications programmer.  That's like asking a day care
teacher for advice on conception techniques.  Why don't you
listen to the folks who _write_ operating systems and system
software for a living.  MS-DOS does not provide the necessary
scheduling and resource allocation handles (among others) to
be considered a modern OS.  Putting Windows on top of MS-DOS
covers up some of the deficiencies, but it no more makes it an
OS than running Sun-PC on a SPARC makes it a PC-clone.  It may
look mean and howl, but if you open it up, it's still a sheep
inside. (If you will pardon the mangled metaphor).  I will
admit, however, that for many applications the PC-clone is a
better choice of platform, especially if you prefer to work
with pre-developed libraries.  There is a _much_ larger base
of tools to work with in the IBMish market that in the Amiga,
and most of them hold your hand a lot better than those
available for, for instance, UN*X boxen.  Most of us in the
Amiga world develop tools from simpler pieces (source code,
mostly UN*X based) or write our own.  It's an attitude
difference.  Very visible between the local Sun and Mac folks.
The Sun folks can't figure out why 'grep' and it's ilk aren't
the perfect tool for textual searches and the Mac folks can't
figure out why you'd want a tool that can't even pop the file
icon up for you when it finds it.  We just spent $150 for a
Mac program that does what fast find on the Sun does for free.
Except for the GUI part, which doesn't seem to matter as much
to the UN*X folks.  Different strokes.  Personally, I find
both metaphors useful at times.  And I have tools that work
both ways on my Amiga.  'Nuf said.  On to the opinion portion
of our program.

As a person who develops system level software, designs
real-time embedded hardware and software and has written
real-time kernel implementations, it is my considered opinion
that AmigaOS provides a more complete and integrated operating
system than Windows, coming in only slightly behind various
flavours of UN*X for general utility and scoring well with
most real time OS's/Executives for system determinism and
elegance of design.  OS/2 has much potential, but my casual
foray into it has left me with the (unsupported) feeling that
it assumes too much about the underlying architecture of the
machine.  The Amiga graphical architecture (among others)
suffers from the same syndrome.  Both appear to be growing
beyond it.  Windows NT is irrevocably tied to an operating
paradigm (Ghod I hate that usage of paradigm) which is foreign
to me, and thus is painful to work with, but it also is headed
in a better direction than its predecessor.  My preference in
PC-based OS's would have to be UN*X or OS/2 as they are not
tied to the GUI as tightly as NT seems to be....

                                                        - MM
-- 
passaretti@crd.ge.com           {whatever}!crdgw1!copernicus!passaret
mrmike@michelotti.ae.ge.com     {whatever}!crdgw1!copernicus!michelotti!mrmike