tlm@pur-phy (Timothy Lee Meisenheimer) (11/18/88)
Well, there was a demonstration of the NeXT machine given by NeXT people at Purdue yesterday. It started with ten minutes of the usual hype and then the NeXT (:-)) 45 minutes was devoted to demo-ing the machine. The hardware is close state of the art and half way through I found myself as mesmerised as as anyone else - we were all chanting softly " Gimme, gimme, GIMME!". But then I began to realize that I had seen a lot of this same potential (Good OS, Sytem throughput, DMA channels - which they really hiped, Graphics, Sound, and with a 68020, 68881 & memory - computing power) on my Amiga! About the only thing missing was the DSP but we know what some of those slots in the A2000 are for don't we! So nothing really revolutionary there. But what I was really impressed with was the software!!! It seems to me that NeXT was very careful and thoughtful about NeXTSTEP and doing a good job with the Object oriented programming approach. I was impressed when they used the "applications builder" and essencial took and precompiled program (object file) - let's call it an 'object' - and proceeded to add any type of user interface they wanted, saved this and then ran it without any more compiling! Holy dynamic linking Batman!! You could hook up a slider gadget to a variable in the object (of coarse you can only do this with variables made available for this in the object). It was like "Power Windows" but without the step of generating code, compiling etc. This made it very clear to me the power of object abstraction. The IPC capabilities oMach was also demonstrated but we all know how useful that is. So, forgive the long windedness please, but my question is: What is stopping this kind of functionality from happening on our Amys? Would it be so difficult to set up an abstraction method or "standard" that would allow us to compile 'objects' (both programs and user interface stuff) with the flexability to use an "applications generator" and fit the pieces together (I guess like a linker) and form an executable which could then be run? I could see taking standard interface objects - like gadgets, menus, etc. - and makeing a library out of them. Am I missing something here? How could we use the IPC proposal to help (ARREX as well I guess). Is this something that would just take too many man-years to do and so wouldn't happen unless taken by a company? Has anyone else thought about this, or has it already been discussed and I just didn't notice? I would love to see something this easy to use (like by my wife) developed. I think we could learn alot from what NeXT has done. I am glad for the power and versatility that the Amiga has to offer. tim.