Portability and the Ivory Tower (was Re: Book on Microsoft C)

[Edward J Driscoll]

In article <3653 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>
>Machine independent code does not imply teletype compatibility. There have
>been a range of machine-independent screen- and graphic- oriented
>environments (in order of increasing sophistication):
>
>	Termcap.
>	Curses.
>	X-Windows.
>	NeWS.
>

Ya.  How many of those run on a Mac and compete with the built-in
Mac routines for speed?  How much of your system's resources do
they consume?

>
>> In all honesty, if the
>> application is that valuable then the odds are good that I 
>> would be willing to hold out for backward-compatible hardware.
>
>And so people build backwards-compatible hardware that cripples the NEXT
>generation of applications. Great thinking.
>-- 

Ooooh, thanks.  I was hoping I would eventually get a snippy little reply.
I was afraid this would go on for some time being a peaceful, intelligent
discussion.   Backwards compatibility does not imply crippling future
applications.  That your 80286 can run 8086 software does not seem
to have crippled it from running system III Unix.  Yet, you are willing
to cripple current applications in the name of portability.

You're right, 'vi' is an excellent example.  I tried to teach a
Mac programmer (with an MS from MIT) how to use it, and he
thought it laughably brutal compared to even the most simple
Mac editor.  Do you really prefer h,j,k, and l to using a mouse?

-- 
Ed Driscoll
The University of Michigan
ejd at caen.engin.umich.edu