info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (09/29/84)
From: "David H M Spector" <SPECTOR@NYU-CMCL1.ARPA> I am typing this note with a brand new, hot off the assembly line copy of Macterminal - Really Nice - Basically the same as the Betas, but faster at higher baud rates. I also Have in my hands a copy of Macintosh Pascal! Its is really neeto. Its have lots and lots of documentation. Including a technical manuahl with lots of dirt on the toolbox and QuickDraw. I will summarize after I spend all weekend with coffee , donuts and my Macintosh. Go Macintosh!!!!!!!!!! David. Oh, yeah, minor addition, TK!Solver is also out, but its price is a little steep, >>> $250.00 <<<. But it too looks like a BIG win. _DHMS -------
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (10/09/84)
From: winkler@harvard.ARPA (Dan Winkler) Yes, we've had the release version of MacTerminal for a while. It has the annoying feature that it frequently goes to the disk for no apparent reason. Martin Haeberli told us that it is snapshotting memory as a precaution against power failure. Another annoying feature is that if you use it on a disk that doesn't have an ImageWriter file, it will give you an alert box *every time* you run it informing you that you will not be able to print and will wait for you to click OK. It does, however, work very well with macput and macget. We've also had Macintosh Pascal for a while and are teaching one of our introductory programming courses on it. We only have 40 copies for 260 students, so we are treating it like a reserve book that can be signed out of the library for 3 hours at a time. It has been working out well (much better than it did last year when we had over 300 people on 1 Vax) and the situation should be even better next year since there is considerable interest among students to buy their own copies (and their own macs) when they become available. Macintosh Pascal is fantastic for teaching. The observe window with single step mode makes it easy to to explain everything from variables to loops. And QuickDraw keeps our examples interesting. (We've even been getting some applause after lectures, a rare event in computer courses here.) One complaint is that text I/O is quite slow. We had one program that took about 5 times as long to run when we put in writeln's to narrate its progress. And we've found two minor bugs relating to what types work in a case statement and as array indices. But our overall impression is very favorable. It's much, much better for teaching than Berkeley pascal. I just hope that they'll do a C development system in the same style.
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (10/10/84)
From: winkler@harvard.ARPA (Dan Winkler)
Since you asked, the reasons we don't make 220 more copies of the
Macintosh Pascal disk and give every student his own are:
1) that would be piracy (so we can't do it in good conscience)
2) the disk is very well copy protected (so we can't do it at all)
Reason 1) is enough to restrain those us administering the course from
distributing illegal copies. But if it were not for reason 2), and we
had put 40 unprotected copies into circulation, I'm sure there would
indeed be an additional 220 copies (at least) by now. This is simply
because many people don't recognize piracy as a bad thing, just as they
don't recognize xeroxing parts of a copyrighted book as a bad thing.