🚀 go-pugleaf

nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU (Nevin ":-]" Liber) wrote:
>Of course it is the issue.  Programming is a contract between the
>programmer and the OS.  If the programmer breaks the rules, bad things
>happen.  I have yet to use a system that has absolutely no rules at all.

   Here you hit on the one essential issue that probably causes all of the
conflict in the PMT vs. CMT debate.  Essentially, with PMT, the OS controls
what the app can do, such that the writer of the app should not have the
capability of "taking over the machine".  The issue may be a little deeper but
that's it in a nutshell.  Oh, by the way, a clock program will not update in a
CMT environment if you run an app that does not relinquish control of the CPU
resource.  Believe it.

>That is because one of the rules of programming a CMT system is that you
>have to give up time for other processes to run.  Duh.  Are you really,
>truly, honestly so dumb that you don't understand this?  If you really
>don't, then you are too stupid to be programming a Mac or Windows or DOS
>machine.

  You're reaching...the telltale sign is that you feel it necessary to insult
the other individual in the debate rather than apply reason and logic.
  
>As science, it's useless; I can't use it to
>predict anything, because my compiler, word processor, spreadsheet, ftp
>client, news reader, email client, etc. don't have the characteristic that
>they need to run an infinite loop.  All of the programmers of these apps
>seem to be a bit brighter than you, because they figured out that they had
>to give up the CPU occasionally to let other processes run.

   Yeah, but not all.  Think about this....you know all of those annoying
alerts that essentially allow the user no alternative but to respond before
doing anything else on the Mac?  Let's see, dialogue boxes in MacSpeak.  These
are the indication that the underlying multitasking mechanism needs rework.  I
don't have a problem with using Macs for their strengths....the Amiga is not
yet an alternative for new technology anymore(Lightwave rendering on a 68040 is
a pain...just as Raydream on my Quadra is a pain).  But to persistently deny
that bits of the MacOS were flawed in conception and implementation puts you in
the same camp that Spindler occupied.  It's just a piece of software after all,
not a religion.(well, maybe it is a religion afterall).  And, what Apple really
needs to do right now is to focus on fixing the problems of MacOS and making it
run quickly and natively on PowerPC cpus.  I'm bullish enough that I'll
probably buy another Mac in the next month.  Essentially, argueing passionately
from a position of ignorance does you no good.
  
>-- 
>        Nevin ":-)" Liber       nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU    (520) 293-2799

-- 
Joseph Crowe
jcrowe@isd.tandem.com