From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: NT? WHY?
Date: 30 Sep 92 17:01:58 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <92274.152722BJT105@psuvm.psu.edu> <BJT105@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>I think there are a couple important reasons people shouldn't "throw their
>support" exclusively to NT or OS/2:
>
>1. They need each other.  Both OS/2 and NT will get better.  The competition
>   between them will drive both systems to higher and higher levels of
>   features and quality.  It is obvious that NT's feature list was driven
>   by OS/2 ... MS will make sure that NT has everything OS/2 has, and more.
>   And IBM is looking at NT as the baseline for OS/2 3.0.  Although we all
>   hate dealing with two platforms, it would be a tragedy for innovation
>   if either NT or OS/2 died.

Why does it have to be OS/2 and XXX???  I think it much more likely
that the high-end war (which in 2-3 years will become mainstream) will
be between NT, Solaris, and UnixWare (from Univel) (also possibly
NextStep).  OS/2 had a chance, but it appears that the main bug/fix +
Windows 3.1 will not be out till December.  Worse ISV support is
lacking. The SSP due soon may help, but it is unclear that OS/2 will
move beyond a niche market of BigBlue sites and Microsoft haters.  I
agree that competition is good, and I originally wanted OS/2 to be that
competition as I felt the Unix competitors were too far behind... but
IBM was slow to move and the Unix competitors appear to be meeting
their delivery dates (which I did not expect).  I'm expecting within
the next few months to be over in comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy arguing
with Unix people as to which is better.  OS/2 may not even be a factor...
though it's slightly too early to say anything definite.  If you want
to see OS/2 not become irrelevant... HOPE... strongly HOPE that the
2.01 comes out ASAP and without bugs.  Early reports sound promising...
but it's clear it's not finished yet.  Also hope that Borland has a
nice debugged professional development environment release very soon...
OS/2 sorely needs this.  C Set/2 has easily cost me 1 month of development
time out of a total project time of 7 months.

>
>2. Neither NT 1.0 or OS/2 2.0 is "the ultimate operating system."  While
>   NT is fresh now, and we've never had an operating systems with so many
>   features in its plan, NT's design will have grown old and awkward in
>   10 or 15 years. Whether it will be neural co-processors for a natural
>   language interface, or a new programming paradigm, we must never count
>   out the competition introducing a new system that rises above the old.

Yes but NT is far closer to the "ultimate OS" than OS/2 is.

>
>3. The pain of dealing with both OS/2 and NT -- especially for the developer --
>   could turn out to be a non-issue.  In terms of the services and abstraction
>   that the operating system provides to the developer, NT and OS/2 are
>   extremely similar.  Programming for DOS or Windows 3.1 or OS/2 2.0 are
>   all very different propositions .. but programming for NT or OS/2 is
>   the same concept:  utilizing the API to protect the programmer from
>   dealing with the hardware or the system.  I think (and hope!) Borland

Sorry... this just isn't the case.  OS/2 is a strict subset of NT
in terms of the non-graphics API, but OS/2 has a lot of historical grundge
and the names and flags are all different.  The graphics API between the two
is enough different to make ports non-trivial.
Plus OS/2 does not come with Multimedia or Networking support.
Further IBM has promised to make Win32s available under OS/2... my
guess is that most developers of mainstream apps will head for Win32s.
Further if they use the Microsoft Class Library... it looks as if they
might be able to hit the Macintosh platform too.

>   might have a surprise for us:  Identical C++ libraries for OS/2 and
>   NT!.. I know of nothing that would not make it feasible (anyone? problems?)
>   If someone could make this a reality, I think we all could be more
>   comfortable allowing OS/2 and NT to fall into their niches: NT, it's
>   portability; OS/2, it's intel-based advantages.  And then we could also
>   feel better about IBM and MS duking it out to make better and better
>   systems for us!
OS/2 has an Intel-based advantage? What?  A ton of Intel assembly language
written by disgruntled Microsoft programmers?

There are tons of people making such C++ libraries already... just call up
Programmers Paradise or Programmers Connection, etc and ask for a catalog...
or look in MSJ or OS/2 Developer there are many ads... this is not all that
great an approach for commercial apps... there are inherent design
differences between the two API's and a fair bit of overhead must
be introduced to compensate.  Plus there are other support issues... not
to mention that apps would have to be written to use these libraries from
the start.

>Bernie Thompson  --   OS/2 2.0 on 16M V-COM 386-33

Brian
-- 
C. Brian Sturgill                I strongly encourage you to read Ross Perot's
University of Utah                             United We Stand
Center for Software Science             How we can take back our country.
brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373  (It's more important than OS/2 vs NT! :-))