prw@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG (Paul R. Wenker) (05/16/88)
From my experiences, APW C is sort of the AppleSoft for the GS. The code isn't very fast or very small, but it's good for quick and dirty programs. The benchmarks we did showed APW C programs to be 3-6 times larger than equivalent assembly programs. Also, they were 1/5 to 1/20 the speed (the more toolbox calls, the better the speed). There is an interesting article in a recent (April?) issue of Call -A.P.P.L.E. It does some benchmarks of assembly, Pascal, and C. The benchmark that sticks out in my mind is one where the assembly program takes 1.5 hours to complete, while the Pascal program takes ~5 hours and the C program takes 18 hours. As long as we are talking about development environments, has anybody looked at the MPW IIGS cross development stuff. Apple gave a demo of it at the Spring Developers Conference and it was pretty impressive. The way it works is like this: The compilers/assembler/linker run under MPW. You use the Mac for all of your editting, assembling, and linking. After you create an output file, you use Apple File Exchange to copy the file to a ProDOS disk and then run it on your GS. If you have both machines hooked up to AppleShare, you can just save the output file onto the server and run the program on your GS straight from the server. The MPW IIGS Tools (Linker, MakeBin, etc.) is available now, as is the MPW IIGS C compiler. Unfortunatly, it's the same terrible MegaMax C compiler used in APW. The MPW IIGS Assembler will be available in June. It's almost, but not quite, fully compatable with APW. Apple said it took them 1/2 a day to convert HodgePodge. The MPW IIGS Pascal compiler (object oriented, MPW Pascal compatable) will be available fourth quarter of this year. I for one have a Mac II on my desk ready and waiting. -Paul R. Wenker -MECC, Technical Services