In article <davido-D52123.22201405012008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
David Orriss Jr <davido@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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.
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