dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Doretta Schrock) (09/28/85)
I am a semi-novice to the Mac (though not to computing/programming) and I am considering buying Neon as a first language for my Mac. I am conversant with the rudiments of Smalltalk, 68000 assembly, and a bunch of other languages. I am looking for a language that I can use with a minimum of trouble on my poor single-drive thin Mac :-( (I do have some access to an external drive I can borrow), without spending two arms and a leg. It would also be nice if my wife & offspring could begin to learn about programming with whatever I get, though I am really more concerned about power (for me) than warm-fuzzyness (for them). I'm eventually interested in developing some graphically-oriented CAI-type programs, in addition to trying out a few game ideas that have been percolating away in my brain-pan for a while... As I am fairly new to this part of the net, I have not seen any discussion of Neon or other possibilities, and so I thought I'd ask. I've seen the reviews in Macworld and Mactutor, but I'd like to elicit some responses that don't require rather large grains of salt :-). So: Is the language as good as it looks to be? Is the documentation *really* the best thing since terminals with lower case? How much swapping on a single-drive machine will I be sentenced to do (can I explore the language and try trivial things with just the one drive)? Any other constructive comments would be appreciated. e-mail is great, but as this is a somewhat temporary address (getting a new one soon), if your comment seems likely to interest others as well, you might want to post it to the net. Thanks in advance, Mike Sellers
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (10/08/85)
> As I am fairly new to this part of the net, I have not seen any >discussion of Neon or other possibilities, and so I thought I'd ask. >I've seen the reviews in Macworld and Mactutor, but I'd like to elicit >some responses that don't require rather large grains of salt :-). > So: Is the language as good as it looks to be? Is the documentation >*really* the best thing since terminals with lower case? How much >swapping on a single-drive machine will I be sentenced to do (can I >explore the language and try trivial things with just the one drive)? >Any other constructive comments would be appreciated. > >e-mail is great, but as this is a somewhat temporary address (getting >a new one soon), if your comment seems likely to interest others as well, >you might want to post it to the net. > > Mike Sellers There exists a Neon mailing list, which may be why you don't see discussion of it on the net. The moderator is T-JACOBS@UTAH-20.ARPA (from uucp, you can get to him through ucbvax, like ...ihnp4!ucbvax!T-JACOBS@UTAH-20.ARPA) I haven't seen anything for about a month, so perhaps the gateway has failed or something. On a small Mac with one drive, swapping is not a problem, but internal memory is. You have to keep remembering to compact memory (Purge Module) ESPECIALLY before you try to save anything out of the Editor Desk Accessory. It is most annoying to do a lot of editing, and then have it bomb when you try to hit the SAVE menu item! (This doesn't happen on a Fat Mac). The documentation is voluminous, and OK as a tutorial, but there is no index, so it is hard to find things. This is supposed to be fixed (and the documentation to get bigger and better) with the update that should be out Any Day Now. I have been having a bad time trying to send messages to a computed object that is a variable in an object, but otherwise I have found the language easy to work with (having no previous experience in either Forth or Smalltalk, from which Neon is derived). One possible problem: Neon is available ONLY on the Mac, so forget about porting anything you might write. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt