Hats off to long-time Mac OS developers...

In article <uce-19A8CC.07502506012008 RemoveThis @comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
Gregory Weston <uce RemoveThis @splook.com> wrote:

> In article <davido-D52123.22201405012008 RemoveThis @news.comcast.net>,
> David Orriss Jr <davido RemoveThis @invalidcodethought.domaincom> wrote:
>
> > To any/all of you who went through developing for the Mac OS from the
> > 80's and 90's.. if you're still writing software for the Mac, you have
> > my respect.. and a bit of sympathy too given the history of developer
> > tools for the Mac:
> >
> > http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/01/an_introductory_mac_os_x_le
> > opard_review_developer_tools.html
> >
> > (http://preview.tinyurl.com/27ugms)
> >
> > When I started using Apples it was with the ][+ and //e - which had
> > their fair share of headaches in terms of developer/programmer tools.
> > But Mac OS dev tools? Moving from the killed-by-MS MacBasic, to MPW, to
> > HyperCard, to Codewarrior, etc etc... It's a miracle anyone wrote
> > software for the Mac prior to OS X and more recently - with the
> > migration to the Intel architecture.
> >
> > Please do not take this as anything other than what it is - I'm not
> > trying to start a flame war or bash the Mac. When the //gs came out I
> > moved over to the PC and about a year ago bought my Mac Pro - which is
> > arguably the best desktop machine ever made. But looking back it just
> > amazes me that Apple and the Mac made it to this point given what they
> > put developers through.
>
> Speaking as someone who's written software for more than a dozen
> distinct platforms I'd have a tough time picking any point in time where
> the experience of developing for Macs was particularly worse than any
> other platform. At least technologically. The biggest problems I've had
> with any platform is the way the vendor treats 3rd-party developers.
> Apple's nadir on that front was 1989, and it took them almost a decade
> to recover from that idiocy. It seems like every vendor goes through a
> period of treating their developers with contempt at some point. You
> should've seen the hoops you had to jump through to be allowed to label
> your software as "Windows compatible" in the second half of the 90s, for
> example. But as far as tools and APIs go, it's been pretty much a wash
> IMO.


Actually I saw the hoops Windows developers went through in the 90's to
get that stamp.. I was one of those developers. It's one of the reasons
I went back to doing Unix and then later Java app development... ;)

--
David O
 >> Stay informed about: Hats off to long-time Mac OS developers... 

In article <uce-19A8CC.07502506012008.RemoveThis@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
Gregory Weston <uce.RemoveThis@splook.com> wrote:

> In article <davido-D52123.22201405012008.RemoveThis@news.comcast.net>,
> David Orriss Jr <davido.RemoveThis@invalidcodethought.domaincom> wrote:
>
> > To any/all of you who went through developing for the Mac OS from the
> > 80's and 90's.. if you're still writing software for the Mac, you have
> > my respect.. and a bit of sympathy too given the history of developer
> > tools for the Mac:
> >
> > http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/01/an_introductory_mac_os_x_le
> > opard_review_developer_tools.html
> >
> > (http://preview.tinyurl.com/27ugms)
> >
> > When I started using Apples it was with the ][+ and //e - which had
> > their fair share of headaches in terms of developer/programmer tools.
> > But Mac OS dev tools? Moving from the killed-by-MS MacBasic, to MPW, to
> > HyperCard, to Codewarrior, etc etc... It's a miracle anyone wrote
> > software for the Mac prior to OS X and more recently - with the
> > migration to the Intel architecture.
> >
> > Please do not take this as anything other than what it is - I'm not
> > trying to start a flame war or bash the Mac. When the //gs came out I
> > moved over to the PC and about a year ago bought my Mac Pro - which is
> > arguably the best desktop machine ever made. But looking back it just
> > amazes me that Apple and the Mac made it to this point given what they
> > put developers through.
>
> Speaking as someone who's written software for more than a dozen
> distinct platforms I'd have a tough time picking any point in time where
> the experience of developing for Macs was particularly worse than any
> other platform. At least technologically. The biggest problems I've had
> with any platform is the way the vendor treats 3rd-party developers.
> Apple's nadir on that front was 1989, and it took them almost a decade
> to recover from that idiocy. It seems like every vendor goes through a
> period of treating their developers with contempt at some point. You
> should've seen the hoops you had to jump through to be allowed to label
> your software as "Windows compatible" in the second half of the 90s, for
> example. But as far as tools and APIs go, it's been pretty much a wash
> IMO.

What about that horrid memory management where you had to know like
before every call wether it moved memory or not????
 >> Stay informed about: Hats off to long-time Mac OS developers... 

In article <proto-E8666F.19002611012008.DeleteThis@70-1-84-166.area1.spcsdns.net>,
Walter Bushell <proto.DeleteThis@oanix.com> wrote:

> In article <uce-19A8CC.07502506012008.DeleteThis@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
> Gregory Weston <uce.DeleteThis@splook.com> wrote:
>
> > Speaking as someone who's written software for more than a dozen
> > distinct platforms I'd have a tough time picking any point in time where
> > the experience of developing for Macs was particularly worse than any
> > other platform. ...
>
> What about that horrid memory management where you had to know like
> before every call wether it moved memory or not????

In practice, it was virtually never an issue. The vast majority of the
time, the question of whether a given routine might move memory was
obviated by coding practices that made reasonable sense even without
that question.

To me, that's less of an issue than the fact that the stock API
documentation for Windows and the API itself diverged so often that
documenting those occasions provided fodder for a substantial monthly
column in one of the more popular developer journals.

Really, for any given platform, the worst experiences I had came from
the vendor directly rather than through the API. The more enjoyable the
coding experience, the more egregious the treatment seemed to be.

Microsoft published a virtual book describing all the things you needed
to do to be allowed to label your software as "Windows-compatible" and
it included some of the most gratuitous and arbitrary things I've ever
seen in a requirements document.

Apple, in 1989, decided to treat its developers as a revenue source.
Drove large numbers of developers away just as Windows was becoming a
viable platform. They didn't come back until the iMac was announced.

Be - probably the second-most-enjoyable *coding* experience I've had -
just out and out lied to its developers and couldn't seem to hold onto a
strategy for more than 4 months.
 >> Stay informed about: Hats off to long-time Mac OS developers... 

On 11/01/2008, Walter Bushell wrote in message <proto-
E8666F.19002611012008.DeleteThis@70-1-84-166.area1.spcsdns.net>:

> What about that horrid memory management where you had to know like
> before every call wether it moved memory or not????

What about the rules about how many times you were meant to call
'MoreMasters()' ? And how those rules changed over the first five years ?

I remember developing for Mac in the early years. I was already into
Pascal so I didn't have a problem with that. And it was obvious that the
API team were trying to implement a proper virtual memory management
system on a computer with one disk drive -- a floppy disk drive. It helped to keep two models in your head: "This is what we really want to do." and "This is what we can do in 256K of memory and booting from a floppy disk.".

Having said that, the API was stunning. Being able to implement your own controls, and have Control Manager take your own code as seriously as it treated its own was wonderful. Bear in mind that the best display API around at the time was X-11. The Mac API was /fun/.

Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk
 >> Stay informed about: Hats off to long-time Mac OS developers... 

In article <proto-E8666F.19002611012008 DeleteThis @70-1-84-166.area1.spcsdns.net>,
Walter Bushell <proto DeleteThis @oanix.com> wrote:

> What about that horrid memory management where you had to know like
> before every call wether it moved memory or not????

I always just assumed everything would move memory, and adopted
practices that weren't fragile: Get current state and lock before use,
restore to previous state after use.

Honestly, while the state of software development on Mac OS was indeed
bad, it was bad on most every other proprietary desktop environment,
too. At the time, I preferred working on Mac OS because things were even
more painful on Win32.
 >> Stay informed about: Hats off to long-time Mac OS developers...