NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/programmer/847

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.6 KB

Path: cs.uwa.edu.au!jasonb
From: [e-mail] (Jason S Birch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: Amiga programmers in deep shit...
Date: 12 Jan 96 01:35:52 GMT
Organization: The University of Western Australia
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <4bsgo0$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: decadence.cs.uwa.oz.au
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #3 (NOV)

"Walter Doerwald" <[e-mail]> writes:
>> As for GCC's usefulness, I suspect the errors
>> you've given indicate a lack of resources on your machine to run it

>I have 2MB chip and 16MB fast, so IMHO there should be no problem.

Well, that, of course, depends on how much RAM it needs. :-) Have you
checked how much it's using under NT?

>It compiles fine with GCC 2.7.2 under DEC/Ultrix and with Borland C++ 4.5
>under Windows NT (BTW, it takes two minutes to compile under WNT)

I did some tests a few weeks ago comparing the relative cost of using
C++ to C under various compilers and OS's. With SAS/C is was *very*
expensive (time, memory, and final object size), while with Visual C++
2.0 under NT it was minimal (and the final object size was only a few
k larger than the Amiga C++ binary!). Still, given my opinions of C++,
it's no great loss to me.

>> which says it's not useable on *your*
>> Amiga, as opposed to "the" Amiga.

>So I'll need to buy another 8 or 16MB of memory (and something to put the
>memory on since the motherboard ist full)

If necessary, yes. gcc's a real memory hog, so if you've got a large
program I guess there are not many options. How much memory does your NT
box have? Subtract 20M from the "committed bytes" during a compile,
and that should give you an idea of how much you'll need.

>I've even tried VMM, it works, but it takes more than 24 hours and 1.2
>million pagefaults. :'-( Hardly an environment to do software development.

Agreed.

>> ALSt304.lzh        dev/lang   380K  73+Amiga Little Smalltalk version 3.04
>> SmallTalk.lha      dev/lang   227K 428+Port of the Little Smalltalk system.
>> smalltlk.lha       dev/lang   362K  18+Amiga Little Smalltalk version 3.09

>I know Little Smalltalk (I've done the V40-guide ;))

:-)

>But Little Smalltalk (developed by Timothy Budd) is *not* Smalltalk80
>(developed by ParcPlace/Digitalk).

I know - I did my CS honours project in Smalltalk/V for Windows, by
Digitalk. It even runs fast on a Pentium. ;-)

>Little Smalltalk is much more limited.
>E.g. Smalltalk80 supports catagories, i.e. you can put your classes into
>different categories (e.g. one catagories for each project). This works for
>methods too, etc. etc. Smalltalk80 has GUI-classes (but hopefully we'll
>have (MUI) GUI classes for ALSt too)

It would be nice. Smalltalk's one of my favourite languages.

>> I seem to recall a text-only SmallTalk80 from years ago, but I don't
>> know where it is (it might have been a generic Unix program).

>This was probably the first version of Little Smalltalk from FishDisk 1(?).

I don't recall. It was a while back. I *did* think it was Smalltalk80,
though, but I can't remember why.

>> None of
>> these have very many custom classes, however, which limits their
>> current usefulness for application design.

>Especially the nonexistent GUI classes.

Yes.

>> I haven't used it for a long time, but it has a few neat features -
>> exception handling, built-in lists, and I believe now
>> object-orientation.

>Exception handling in what way? The way C++ does it? (Calling destructors
>when throwing an exception)

Apparently it does exceptions the same way ADA does (that's what the
docs claim - I personally have no experience with ADA). You can, for
example, do something like: (taken from the docs)

CONST SIZE=100000
ENUM NOMEM  /* ,... */

RAISE NOMEM IF AllocMem()=NIL

PROC main()
  alloc()
ENDPROC

PROC alloc() HANDLE
  DEF mem
  mem:=AllocMem(SIZE,0)         /* see how many blocks we can get */
  alloc()                       /* do recursion */
EXCEPT DO
  IF mem THEN FreeMem(mem,SIZE)
  ReThrow()                     /* recursively call all handlers */
ENDPROC

>What does built-in lists mean? Has E features to define new types, and the
>lists are part of the standard library? Or are they hard wired?

It seems lists are hard wired, but they come with a full set of support
functions for appending, etc. However, E can define new types, and
also has LISP cells, interestingly enough, with Car, Cdr, and automatic
garbage collection. (I'm scanning through the docs having just ftp'd
the archive. It seems quite neat.)

>OO? This probably means it's possible to define new types. Does E
>distinguish between inheritance of interface and inheritance of
>implementation?

It's a little hard to tell from the quick glance I've given it. If you
want to take a look, grab aminet:dev/e/amigae32a.lha.

>I suppose E gives you crashes, when putting the wrong type into variables.

I suppose only if you then use those variables incorrectly. :-) I
mean, given it's a type-free language, it could hardly get too upset
if you put different types into a variable. Naturally enough, however,
if you use incorrect types in function calls, it could crash. Shame,
really - it seems rather cool apart from that.

>Bye...
>    Walter Doerwald

--
Jason S Birch                        ,-_|\ email: [e-mail]
Department of Computer Science      /     \ Tel (work): [phone]
The University of Western Australia *_.-._/ Fax (work): [phone]
Nedlands  W. Australia  6907             v  Tel (home): [phone]