SELLSWORTH@HMCVAX.BITNET ("Scott, part time fuzzy") (08/11/89)
This is a kind of long semi-flame, semi-review of TML systems and thier marketing attitude. Whack 'n' now to avoid it. These are just observations. I am a partially satisfied customer, and I am interested in the experiences of any other netters. I called TML systems the other day about thier new Pascal for the //gs. The kindly folks said that they had not yet shipped (big surprise) due to bugs. Unlike last time, however, they were waiting on software from Apple. They have claimed that thier software has been done since early June, shading into July as thier August release date appropached. They told me that "Apple's new system software is very buggy, so they are waiting for Apple to send them a bugless version." Does this sound like they are using one of the development versions of system 5.0, or are they merely trying to cover thier inability to get a product out on time? In other word, those of you from Apple, is this reasonable? I tend to boubt, because ,to my knowledge, they have never met a release date, or even been within a month and a half of an expected release date.) In short, has anyone had any favorable experiences with them regarding releasing thier products to the outside world? A side note:I asked them if they ever intended to compete with the Byte Works folks by offering desktop debuggers. I was kind of thinking of Lightspeed Pascal on the Mac, which offers friendly segmentation and decent project management. (Anyone who has tried to port a file from Unix that used a makefile to manage the creation of one code file from a dozen source files knows what I am talking about....) Thier response was "We have not marketed our product for those who might have need for a debugger. In our experience, only advanced programmers desire symbolic debugging tools and optimization. Our product is for the starting programmer who would not need these features." Hmmm. I kind of like symbolic debuggers, especially when I am learning a language. Kind of gives you a chance to see what the machine is actually doing. As I recall, Dave Lyons has done some very good work with TML Pascal, though I have forgotten which version. Has anyone else done significant amounts of work with thier compiler (either version)? I have done maybe a couple thousand lines of code with the integrated version, and I see enough problems to worry me. Flames to /dev/null, money to my bank account, and disclaimers to the hilt! Scott Ellsworth sellswor@jarthur.claremont.edu SELLSWORTH@HMCVAX