From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,89226195d95fba21
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Operating Systems
Date: 1997/07/23
Message-ID: <dewar.869670348@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 258585917
References: <33D541EF.17B6@digiscape.com>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-07-23T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Robert asks

<<Looking for some objective opinions.  I am a new programmer and am going
to be doing it for a living and will be buying a new computer soon.  I
am trying to find out what will be the best and most practical operating
system to run on a home computer that will be used for programming a
lot.  I have heard very good things about Windows NT, but dont know much
about it.  Are there any good books that could help me with this?  Can
somebody help me with what would be best for these purposes?  Thanks for
the help.
>>


I am unable to discern any Ada content here, but let's just assume that
it the "programming a lot" will be in Ada, or why would the question
have been posted here?

If so, then an attractive alternative to NT for program development on
a PC is Linux. It is less expensive than NT, and far more capable in
many respects. It is also much better suited in many people's opinion
to the task of program development -- Unix was really designed for
this purpose, while NT was designed primarily for other purposes.
This does not mean that it is impossible to do development on NT,
and indeed the judgment somewhat depends on what kind of development
you plan to do.

If you want to fiddle around with user interfaces, e.g. the sort of
thing that is probably best done in Visual Basic in any case, then
NT is certainly attractive.

if you are planning on developing large scale complex programs, then
Linux seems a much better bet. For example, the command line support
that comes with NT is truly pathetic, it is basically just DOS (OS/2
by contrast has FAR better support in this respect).

So take a look at Linux -- there is a full featured Ada 95 compiler
available for this environment, which is also free software (GNAT)