🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <danpop.824477998@rscernix>, danpop@mail.cern.ch (Dan Pop) wrote:

> You mean that Apple programmers are so incompetent that they're not able
> to write code which can be easily migrated from one hardware platform
> to another?

First off, I would comment on the competency of Apple's programmers if I
were you.  The code you've posted hasn't exactly been a shining example of
good, 100% portable ANSI C code (you have lots and lots of handwaving
arguments of how trivial it is to make it portable, but you rarely post
the actual code based on your ravings), and you claim that this is the
type of code that you find trivial to write.  Apple has different goals
than you do, and at least they come far closer to achieving their goals
than you seem to come to yours.

Portability of system software at Apple, until recently, wasn't a goal. 
Should I fault the GNU people for writing some of the slowest tools on the
planet, even though portability, at the expense of performance, was their
goal?  I can't fault them for that.  I don't agree with their goal; then
again, I use tools far more often (by orders of magnitude) than I port
them, so I'd rather have tools that are fast and, more importantly, allow
me to work faster than ones that are portable.

> Linux was ported to a bunch of platforms and Apple is porting
> it now to the PMac (they don't even seem to wait for the PPCP).  If this
> was possible (so easily) with Linux (or *BSD), why do you think it would
> be so difficult with software written by Apple's professional programmers.

Apple has been trying to maintain binary compatibility for all these
years.  Last I checked, Linux on an x86 won't run Solaris SPARC binaries. 
To paraphrase you Dan:  if this was possible (so easily) with MacOS, why
do you think it would be so difficult with software written by all the
Unix vendor's professional programmers.  (Hint:  it was never a goal of
Unix to be binary compatible.)

> Windows users had the choice between at least a dozen of OS's with PMT.

And the ones that won out were the ones w/o it.  Just goes to show you how
unimportant it is to most people.

> The PMac users had MacOS as their only option.  Can you see
> the difference?

I don't really care.  I don't buy a computer to run an OS; I buy it to run
(and for me, to develop) applications.

> Apple programmers didn't try very hard to get their software right.

Bullshit, Dan.  Unlike Linux, Apple has real deadlines to meet when they
ship products.  Deciding what to work on is what you have to do when you
make engineering tradeoffs.  Otherwise, you have a product that is never
quite ready for other people to use.
-- 
        Nevin ":-)" Liber       nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU    (520) 293-2799