From: jbone@splat.dell.com (Jeff Bone)
Subject: Re: New idea ... (long)
Organization: Dell Computer Co
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 14:41:51 GMT

Two little points of contention:

thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark Thomsen) writes:
>
>Lots of Unix people (Unix in their classroom, Unix on their desk, ...) still
>believe that they have the best development environment. They are, as many can
>attest, way behind the power curve. Even with InterfaceBuilder and the many
>reuseable components on NeXTSTEP, the best overall development environments are
>on Symbolics and PCs. The rapid prototyping and construction of UI-intensive
>apps on the NeXT is a huge leap over most Unix development stuff, but not all
>that far ahead of the PC world.
>

Okay, I'm only going to say this once:  I make my $$$ writing mission-critical
IS systems.  Up until about 6 months ago, I did *exclusively* UNIX/X/TCP/IP/
RPC/SQL type stuff.  TO MY UNDYING HORROR, I am now attempting to do similar
on DOS gunga, using what is touted as a state-of-the-art application
development environment for Windows.  I now wake up every morning simply
ruing the day I was born. (ruing?  anyway... ;)  Point being, I have
sat on both sides of that fence, and feel like I at least have an informed
opinion to express.

FLAME ON:

The statement that superior or more sophisticated development tools exist
for DOS/Windows than in the workstation world is, IMHO, caca, gunga, crap, 
and just plain wrong.  I suggest that anybody who truly believes this im-
mediately get themselves medical attention;  I don't know whether to
suggest an eye-ear-nose-throat specialist or a proctologist, but in any
case see somebody about extracting your head parts from your rectal parts.

Seriously, what world are you living in?  Sure, Visual Basic is easier
than, say, C with no tools + Curses, but who builds anything like that
anymore, anyway?  Hate to tell ya, pal:  all those GUI tools you are so
fond of started out on the Mac and, to a lesser degree, X and other UNIX
GUIs.  In concept if not in code.  It wasn't until pretty recently that
Billy-boy slapped his forehead and said "Ya know, what we need is a user
interface for DOS!"  (okay, I know this isn't entirely true, you get my
point) 

> And the technical finesse and quality
> of PC software products peak perhaps as
> high or higher than Unix equivalents.

Yeah, okay *WHATEVER*. 
You believe that?  
Really?
No, come on, *REALLY*?

FLAME OFF.

(oops, I was wrong)

FLAME ON:

> There is the
> pre-integrated networking, pre-integrated multi-tasking, and the large
> collection of Unix utilities (perl, awk, yacc, grep, ...) - most can be
> overcome at reasonable expense under DOS.

See, this isn't something that *ought* to *have* to be "overcome".  This
*kind of thing* should be considered part of the minimum definition of
a complete OS environment.  And I consider my own time to be worth some
amount of $$$ --- why should I waste time putting something together
in DOS which is a standard environment out-of-the-box on UNIX???

FLAME OFF.


A quote from the Slickee Boys might be appropriate to end with, but 
I've already been harsh enough. ;)  


C ya, standard disclaimers.


jb


--
-- Jeff Bone ------------------------------------------------------------
      "Imagination is more important than knowledge."  - A. Einstein
------------------------------------------------------- jbone@dell.com --
                                                                       --
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy