Re: Ada on the Mac (was: AppletMagic stuff)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1996Oct7.143041.1@eisner>,
Larry Kilgallen <kilgallen@eisner.decus.org> wrote:

>Having just heard about the selection of MachTen due to it having
>a command-line style of operation, it just occured to me that
>some folk who might be in a position to make a difference were
>not aware of that IDE option.  Perhaps Metrowerks makes the same
>offer, for all I know.

I didn;t say we chose MT because it had a command line. I said we chose it
because it has a stable and supported GCC infrastructure. If one had
existed for MPW, we might have gone that way. As it happens, I'm glad
we selected MachTen, because it does provide a nice way to use Unix
capabilities without throwing away your MacOS apps.

What I said about command lines is that the Mac does not provide a
standard one, so just getting started on a GNAT port requires _some_
add-on, purchased environment that supports a GCC.

This is as though Windows 95 did not provide a command line, or if 
Solaris _required_ you to use X, with no direct way to get to a shell.

>Absolutely !  I can affect the mix of 68K vs. PPC machines
>in the development environment, but there is no way to change
>that at customer sites.  To paraphrase some politician,
>"Dollars for Development, not one cent for runtime royalties."

We are in violent agreement here.

>And they will have a much easier time getting Apple support.

I don;t know if they get any tangible support from Apple, but they and
Apple are certainly "plugged in" to each other. 

>Apple may not be the richest company but they have the ear of
>a lot of software developers.

True. Apple is far from dirt-poor, in any case. Many folks have
written Apple's obituary many times (mostly folks with an axe to
grind) but Apple soldiers on and sells millions of computers a year.
That ain;t hay. As we in the Ada community know, market share is
not the only valid measure of success.:-)

>Larry Kilgallen

Mike Feldman