earleh@dartvax.UUCP (Earle R. Horton) (07/11/87)
In article <3761@osu-eddie.UUCP>, elwell%tut.cis.ohio-state.edu@osu-eddie.UUCP (Clayton Elwell) writes: > Oh, come on. I use a Mac Plus, a Mac II, a Sun 3/50, a Pyramid 98x, an > Encore Multimax, and a DECSystem-2060, among others. I spend about the same > proportion of my time waiting for each of these. Even on a nice, big, fast, > multitasking machine, I end up going and getting a Coke after typing "make." > > > > >I am no fan of Unix but I prefer Unix over the Macintosh's OS any day. > >Even if the Mac OS came wrapped in a 25 Mhz 68020 and the Unix on a > >wimpy 750. The multitasking Unix would still more productive. > > > >Ali Ozer, ali@rocky.stanford.edu > > I'll believe it when I see a concrete example. > > Clayton Elwell Clayton, I do educational software development for my masters, oops, I mean benefactors, oops, I mean associates, on an IBM RT running 4.2 BSD and a choice of Andrew or X-windows. The RT is dogmeat-slow compared to some machines (IBM promises a new CPU in July, we will see then). It may even have a slower processor than the Mac II, I don't really know. The graphics are of course primitive compared to QuickDraw. I believe that the price is comparable to a Mac II with the same features. I am a fan of X, others here use Andrew. I usually open up three shell windows in X: console, editor (jove), and graphics. I edit sources with jove. When I am ready to compile, I type ^X^E, and jove causes make to execute my Makefile. If errors are found, jove looks at the output of make and goes right to them. The speed and ease of use is about the same as Lightspeed C. If things bog down, such as when compiling a large project or a lot of errors are found, I switch to the console window and do other tasks. If I have two projects I am working on concurrently, I merely open up two edit windows. I switch between make and edit in each window, and never have to wait for the processor. Our installation has an IBM PagePrinter connected to one of the RTs. Text output is comparable to the Apple LaserWriter. There is no postscript, but there are screen dumps, some of which can be quite high quality. There is a WYSIWYG editor. Printing is much faster for three reasons. First, the utilities for handling printer output are light years ahead of LaserWriter 4.0 in the speed category. Second, I can print in background. Third, there is none of this "looking for LaserWriter" garbage. The printing program just looks in /etc/printcap to see what printer is connected, and which of the machines on the network is the server. I never have to get up and get a Coke, unless I want one. Personally, I would rather have teeth when I am an old man than drink that stuff now. I do take a tea break now and then. Sometimes I do work from home. Then, I use uw on my Mac. I achieve the same results using three or four pseudo ttys as I do at work. The speed is somewhat reduced because of the 1200 baud bottleneck, but windows which are compiling are merely rotated to the back. For those without a window manager program or uw, but with 4.3 BSD, there is /usr/ucb/window. If you have multi-tasking, and know how to set things up properly, there is virtually no waiting. Companies which do proper multi-tasking are aware that multiple window interfaces are necessary to make the benefits available to users. There is no way that Apple or any other company is going to exceed or even match the performance of a multi-tasking multi-window system using raw processor speed alone. Even a single-window system, using background processing and redirection of output to files, is faster. Even VMS is faster, if you know how to type "spawn/nowait". Earle -- ********************************************************************* *Earle R. Horton, H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 * *********************************************************************