starr@shell.UUCP (10/13/83)
Here are some observations on the world of the PC. I know I'm rambling, but here goes........................... Are any of the employees of InfoWorld out of puberty? Will we ever see what the IRMA girl looks like? No program written in BASIC is worth the disk it resides upon. The current issue of PC contains no useful information until page 50-something. The novelty of a 600+ page magazine has worn off. I took my new PC into the john, and was finished before I got to the "Letters to the Editor". Pascal is for children. Modula/2 is for quiche eaters. ADA is for airheads. Most "user friendly" code was written in Pascal. Pascal programmers think you should take as much time using their program as they took writing it. The UCSD P-System is a joke. How are its producers staying in business? The chick who does the Q&A column in Softalk should be making hamburgers in McDonalds. She probably knows as much about making french fries as how the PC works. (She once advised a reader to call VisiCorp to find out the exact address at which VisiCalc loaded). VisiCorp has putrid software. Mitch Kapoor (of 1-2-3 fame) was quoted as saying that 1-2-3 was originally written in C, but was rewritten in assembler since the C version ran like a dog. Just goes to show that a business major should stay out of the software business! I have seen far too many good programmers wasting their time creating patches to WordStar. I feel sorry for people who buy WordStar and think that it is good software. The words "user friendly" have been used too often. Henceforth, anyone who says "user friendly" should be shot. People who copy protect their software are only keeping the UNcopy program people in business, and causing competent programmers to waste an awful lot of time. Computer games are a waste of time. Especially nonproductive adventure games. How can any normal person get any satisfaction out of that junk? Especially after you get over the novelty of having a program seemingly understand English? Salesmen (of any kind) must be the world's lowest life form. They are incompetent and always make more money than the people who do the real work. The salesman drives a Caddy while the creator of the product drives a VW. That is truly sad. It is especially sad to think that the person advising you on your next major software purchase was selling cars the week before. Salesmen have personality. That is usually their only qualification for the job. And their only talent in life. And you pay for it. Dearly.