Re: Building an Ada compiler

[emery@grebyn.com (David Emery)]

In article <dewar.836157364@schonberg>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:

> Tuck says
> 
> "Not everyone agrees with you, but as you say, they will have to put
> their money or their time where there mouth is.  Even using MPW
> on the Mac is distasteful to many people."
> 
> Actually I think for most people MPW (or its successor) are much MORE
> distasteful than using MachTen, since at least the Unix command language
> is familiar to a lot of programmers. Very few programmers (including
> Mac System-7 users) are familiar with the MPW command language.
> 
> I don't see any real point in a GNAT for MPW effort, but a GNAT that
> worked directly under System-7 with a visual IDE would be definitely
> of interest, though that's a much bigger effort.
> 
> One thing that is important, and is true of both MPW and Machten, is that
> it is important to be able to run under System-7, and co-exist with
> System-7 applications. That's a nice feature of MachTen, which at least
> for us makes it much more interesting than MkLinux.

I completely agree with RBKD on this one.  MPW seemed to take the worst
of Unix.  If you know Unix, then MPW is horribly confusing.   THere's
lots of incompatabilities with Unix, that seem to be there just for the
dubious joy of doing things differently.  MPW lacked the consistency
that is the hallmark of VMS and DCL, and lacked the "universality" and
flexibility of Unix.  I tried it, and didn't like it.  (No jokes about
inhaling, please :-) 

MachTen, on the other hand, is a dream.  It's full Unix, but it's also a
very well-behaved Mac application.  And it's just too wierd to 'rsh/rcp' over
from my Sun to my Mac, to grab a file...

MachTen's ability to generate native Mac applications is a real plus, but
I can't say that I've tried this yet.  

Now, I wouldn't mind a full Ada95 Development Environment, as a native
Mac application.  But, as an experienced Unix -AND- Mac user, the only
problem I have with MachTen is that it's not free :-)   It's Tenon's 
business to decide how to sell their product, but I really believe that
MachTen would go much further if it were cheaper...

            dave