From: aberno@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Anthony Berno)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: NeXT vs PC
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 05:13:48 GMT
Reply-To: aberno@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca

In article <199204162219.AA27929@cnam.cnam.fr> eronald@CNAM.CNAM.FR  
(Edmund Ronald) writes:
>... I find that
> my old Toshiba T1000 with no hard disk and Turbo Pascal 5.5 outperfroms
> the NeXT for simple programming.
> The reason is speed. TP can take under a second to compile, and hilites  
the
> errors in the editor. The strong typing catches most bugs immediately. 

It seems that the faster the computer, the slower the compiler. The  
slowest compiler I worked with was on a bleedin' 128-node 88100 based  
parallel machine. Took ages, although of course the compiler itself didn't  
run in parallel.

> The NeXT environment is great, but awfully slow (several seconds) badly
> integrated (no editor-compiler combo that hilites errors fast), has no
> real compile-time checking (the trouble with C) . 

This is true, in some ways. I sure liked working with the Lightspeed  
Pascal editor on the Mac. I made a lot fewer stupid mistakes, and could  
basically program at full typing speed due to the automatic multi-font  
editing and pretty printing. Didn't even have to hit the return key!

Keep in mind, though, that with a bit of adjustment, you can do pretty  
well on the NeXT. The tools are different, but not actually inferior. What  
I lose in the way of productivity is more than made up for by the ability  
to do more creative things than were possible with the Mac. Adding Indent  
to the Edit menu brings it close to automatic pretty-printing, except that  
you lose your place when you run it. :-( Then there is make, which is  
really a breath of fresh air after the rather regimented means of  
controlling code with the Mac. Digital librarian and the graphical Gdb are  
also very helpful. All together, I rate them about equal. A real-time  
pretty printing editor with grammar checking, and a few simple CASE tools,  
and the NeXT would win hands down.

>It is GREAT however for
> writing GUI applications. There it beats anything else hands down.
> Ha- I have fed the flames some more :-)

Tell me about it! It's a dream. Instead of, as I did with the Mac,  
spending an entire day doing a #^%@#$! user interface for a one-window  
program, I can do it in less than half an hour. This has been really  
useful for my physics classes, because we are always getting computer  
assignments involving simulation. Although I spend time doing the GUI, I  
get the assignment done *much* faster than any of my classmates because I  
can fiddle the paramters much more easily with sliders and such. Example:  
a quantum mechanics assignment, where we had to numerically solve the 1D  
Schrodinger equation for a variety of potentials. There are two common  
approaches:

1) Use heuristics to figure out when you are getting closer / further away  
from a converging solution. Lots of programming.

2) Type in some numbers, get out the results, put them into your graphing  
program, look at them, and start over. Takes hours.

I, instead, whipped up a little program that animates a graph of the  
wavefunction as you move sliders for each parameter. Time to program UI: 1  
or 2 hours, including the animated graph. Time for simulation code, which  
I needed to write anyway: another couple hours. Time to get one converging  
solution: 15 *seconds*. Time for my friends to get 1 converging solution:  
15 *minutes*. Number of solutions found: 14. Time savings: over 2 hours,  
with a way cooler program to show for it, and a higher ratio of  
interesting to repetitive work.

I also got major brownie points on my statistical mechanics assignment, a  
simple molecular dynamics simulation. When I handed it in, the prof looked  
at it and said "Oh, you used a NeXT. I just bought one on Friday. Could  
you show me how your program works sometime?" :-)

I call these my "Micro - Mission Critical Apps". 

I'm giving a talk at an upcoming conference on Mathematics, Science and  
the Macintosh, about custom application development. (Sharing the podium  
with the likes of Wolfram, btw. Major intimidation!) It would be very bad  
politics, but I'm very tempted to say "Just buy a NeXT!" I think I'd never  
be able to show my face at an Apple event again. :-)

Sorry for a long rambling posting, but I just got my wisdom teeth out and  
feel miserable. This keeps my mind off of it.

-Anthony