From: bgrubb@dante.nmsu.edu (GRUBB)
Subject: Re: YA Mac horror story
Organization: New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 01:41:15 GMT

cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu (Carl B Jabido) writes:
>Well, where should I start?  I guess that dreadful day when my prof told
>me we'd be using Object Pascal Genie for the class (surprisingly written
>here at CMU on Macs, by a bunch of computer illiterates).
That alone explains everything that follows.  There were {and are} badly 
written programs for the Mac or IBM or programs running on the wrong system.
One I helped deal with was a programing app designed for system 4.1 and 
running on 6.0.3.  It froze SE Macs like crazy for no reason. My solution?  
Give everybody Programer's key.  This little INIT allowed people to reset the 
machine using the programer's and interupt switches from the keyboard
{the code was SM 0 A9F4 [return] G 0 [return]}. Now you are in the finder {90% 
of the time} select restart command for the special menu and try again.
Not the neatest solution but it was a Q & D solution for a bad program that 
the university had the programers had to use and became the standard add on 
for mac programers the last year I was at the University of Utah.
>Into my head popped up images of dialog boxes like "Cannot quit, not 
>enough memory. 
>Push okay."  Or even, "Low on memory, some functions will be disabled,"
>after just opening a 29000 byte program.  I didn't even run it.  Didn't
>even edit it!  By the way, this is all on a IIci with 8 megs of Physical
>ram.
More proof that the programer was ignorent about the Mac.  At Ohio State 
University we had a Pascal program with code and libraries that ran on a Plus 
with just 1MB {And OS 3.1.  It was a VERY old version of Pascal}.  There are 
and were Think Pascal versions could run well in the enviroment you discribe.
>Pretty cool, pretty neat.  I closed that window.  Because I'm so lucky
>with Macs, I started looking around again, and all of a sudden, the
>system locked up.  Why?  Well, I was closing only the document, not the
>whole app.  
MacWrite in general has LONG been consitered a joke in the Mac world.  The 
most common comment when somebody at both my universities said "There is a New 
version of the Mac OS out" was "When is the new version of MacWrite due out?"
Resently it has gotten better.  I suppect that your home built app was NOT 
compatable with Multifinder {U of U's programer app was not.} and THAT is why 
the Mac froze {And why it had other problems with memory.  The results you 
describe were CLASSIC at U of U with most of the home built programs until 
people there started to use ResEdit to build the objects and low level Pascal 
compilers to write the rest of the code. {Using ResEdit's resouces as hooks 
for the code to call to REQUIRES that you KNOW what you are doing.}
>But wait, most other systems close the app when you close
>the document, so why not the Mac?  I mean, it makes sense; if I'm not
>gonna work on Document X which uses MacWrite II, why should Macwrite II
>be loaded in the system?
This harks back the days when only ONE program at a time could be open and has 
been carried into present systems for Human interface and compatability 
reasons.

One program should NEVER determine the usefulness of any computer or OS.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy