declan@portia.Stanford.EDU (Declan McCullagh) (08/22/90)
In an earlier message, Ronald Hardock (rhardock%alias@csri.utoronto.ca) writes: >Please excuss me if this request is inappropriate for this group. >I am very interested in doing independent research, leading hopefully >to a marketable product on the Next. > >Some questions I have are: >1)How do I go about becoming a NeXT developer? (phone number/email address >of someone at NeXT to contact for more information). > >2)What benefits do registered developers get? (such as pricing discounts). > >3)How difficult is it to become a registered developer? > This question has been raised a number of times in the past few months, so I thought that it would be a good time to post this... The following information was taken from the back of NeXT's Summer 1990 Software and Peripherals Catalog. --- THE NeXT REGISTERED DEVELOPER PROGRAM The NeXT Registered Developer Program is designed to encourage and support the development of software and hardware products for the NeXT Computer System. Registered Developers are entitled to: TRAINING The cornerstone of the Developer Program is the five-day training course, "Programming the NeXT Computer." As of April, 1990, more than 800 developers have already taken the course, which is taught on both the East and West coasts. In addition to teaching developers how to write NeXT applications, it covers basic development strategies. EQUIPMENT Registered Developers can purchase NeXT products at reduced prices. TECHNICAL SUPPORT Technical support is provided by electronic mail to Registered Developers whohave attended "Programming the NeXT Computer." CO-MARKETING PROGRAMS NeXT publishes a semiannual catalog of products for the NeXT Computer, and Registered Developers are encouraged to submit entries. In addition, NeXT includes Registered Developers in many of its own marketing and sales activities, when appropriate. PUBLIC RELATIONS Registered Developers can receive assistance with press relations. DEVELOPER PROGRAM APPLICATION INFORMATION To qualify for the NeXT Registered Developer Program, developers must fill out a detailed application outlining their background and proposed products. Interested developers should contact: NeXT TeleBusiness 900 Chesapeake Drive Redwood City, CA 94063 (800) 848-NeXT --- Naturally, I can only speak for myself and not NeXT (I'm not working for them quite yet), but the program seems to be quite well run; I'd recommend it to anyone who has the necessary capital and wants to do serious development on the NeXT. -Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Olympic Technologies / Registered NeXT Developers \ declan@portia.stanford.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dwallach@soda.Berkeley.EDU (Dan Wallach) (11/15/90)
(No doubt, people will take issue with some of the statements in here.
Feel free to e-mail me your thoughts, and I may post a second summary.)
I originally asked about what it's like to be an "official" NeXT developer,
and asked people to tell me what they thought. Here's the quick summary,
and I've put some of the more interesting comments at the end.
NeXT developer prices are roughly the same as the educational discounts,
unless you plan to buy in bulk, then you save more.
Becoming a "Registered Developer" is a relatively painless procedure of
filling out several pages of forms and mailing it off. This procedure is
free, and takes only a week to get approved! NeXT offers a $990 training
course twice a year for developers, which apparently takes place on both
coasts. The $990 covers the 5 day course, but no mention was made of
hotel/food costs. I'd like to see NeXT offer this thing "at cost" for
people like me who'd just assume commute to the thing (if it's in the
Bay area) and are starving students. $990 seems to be not too far out
of wack for the industry, though. I got some mail from OSF about a
Motif course for around $300, and I don't think it was more than a day
long. If your company's footing the bill, $990 is fine. It's not
clear if this course is required or just "a good idea."
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I can become and stay a NeXT
developer, for free, and forever. (What did your mother always tell
you about getting something for nothing :-)
In essence, NeXT would love you to register as a developer, but it won't
do you much good, and for most home hackers who won't be selling their
wares, most likely isn't worth the hassle, unless you want the developer
price on hardware, roughly the same as the educational discount.
I asked what people thought about the learning curve. I'm told that
GUI-type work is extremely painless, however, getting used to Objective-C
and it's messages, classing system, and the like takes some time.
Most weren't very familiar with X-windows, but felt NeXTstep was
a significant improvement.
If you buy your machine from NeXT, service is apparently very awful.
Technical information is there, but very hard to get. See below for
some more insightful comments on NeXT internals. Unless your company
happens to be Lotus or Ashton-Tate or Aldus or some other big-name,
don't expect them to be very available or useful.
(I'm told) The only availiable program sources are:
GNU sources - NeXT's sources to cc, make, etc.
Mach sources - sources to the kernel - NOT THE UNIX KERNEL, though!
Netinfo sources - sources to NeXT's answer to Sun YP.
That means, you can't get at DPS internals, Unix utility internals,
NeXTstep internals, or device driver internals. If you're trying
to write a device driver for your neat new gismo, you may be S.O.L.,
unless you just happen to know everything there is to know about Mach.
Don't count on hacking their code to do what you want, or trace
just exactly where things aren't working correctly.
Here are some of the more curious responses I've gotten. Read
and be enlightened.
Thanks to all who mailed me!
Dan Wallach
dwallach@soda.berkeley.edu
P.S. So, what am I going to do? Looks like I'll just buy the normal
NeXTstation Color, buy somebody else's drive (possibly with a
SCSI tape drive), and try to find a good book on Objective-C.
My campus rep mentioned NeXT has a new 200 meg (external ?)
drive for some more reasonable price than getting the machine
with the 330 meg. This merits more investigation.
I still plan on buying this, despite the recent proliferation
of older machines suddenly appearing for under $1000, like the
IBM RT's for $550... In one sense, a machine like that is hard
to pass up, but there isn't very much you can DO with it (in
terms of available, free software). I could use Mathematica
for my nasty physics classes...
=========================================================================
From: asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth)
> You would get all the developer manuals and stuff (when you go to the
> course), you would get technical support via phone (and fax I'd
> imagine), you'd get beta OS's and the alike I believe too. Internal
> source, I don't think so. But you do get everything FREE after you
> pay the initial $900 for the course, books, etc. No yearly fees or
> such. A pretty good deal to me! Discounts are at about the 30% mark,
> which is what the educational discount is, at least here it is.
From: declan@remus.rutgers.edu
> I can envision small developers writing lots of small programs which
> interact with each other in an unprecedented fashion.
{ed: sounds lots like Unix with pipes, eh? :-}
> As a developer, you would be able to call (or send email to) NeXT DTS for
> technical support... Right now, the NeXT developer program is modelled after
> Apple's developer program (except Apple's is a few hundred dollars/year, and
> NeXT's is free), but as NeXT grows, I'd expect the developer program to grow
> with it.
From: scott@nic.gac.edu
[about NeXTstep]
> Well, I think it's more pleasent than X. But I don't know if they can
> be so easily compared. A competent NeXTStep developer is not equal to
> a competent X developer. The competent NeXTStep developer should be
> able to throw a program's user interface together in about a quarter the
> time, if not less, and is able to modify it in a very small fraction of
> the time it takes an X developer. The main problem I've seen with X
> developers is that the UI work is painful enough that they do not like
> to rearrange it until the UI itself becomes so painful as to absolutely
> require it. Meanwhile, on the NeXT, developers almost rearrange too
> _much_, because it's almost not painful enough!
> Of course, none of that affects the basic idea of the program - it is
> something besides UI, right? But, removing much of the work for the
> part which makes up most of the program can really help.
From: isbell@ucscf.UCSC.EDU (Art Isbell)
> I don't know what type of service you mean, but you do get telephone support.
> If I needed equipment service, I would have to deal with NeXT directly.
> I see no evidence of advanced bug fixes, OS patches, or internal sources. The
> more productive developers receive beta versions of new OS releases so they
> can begin porting their applications before the masses have the new release.
> They are also privy to NeXT's plans for future changes to the degree that
> these changes affect the developer's products.
From: blackbox!deltos!sstaton@uunet.UU.NET (Steven R. Staton)
> You get the same deal we do, as developers. NeXT is not pulling
> any ca-ca like Apple did with it's developer/student/retailer pricing.
> And NeXT doesn't hide too much from the development community.
> So don't panic and don't bother with developer status unless you
> got a real product to sell. Otherwise you are just adding paperwork
> to your life.
From: "an anonymous NeXT developer"
> We are consultants, and we've had tough times getting info of any sort out of
> them (we've had better luck talking to the folks on the 800 line than we have
> had talking to other NeXT people!). We were originally advised to not bother
> applying to be developers, but to just go get a machine from Bland and do it.
> For some bizarre reason, we were approved in less than 7 days (and that
> includes US snail!), but to date it hasn't gotten us all that much. Our copy
> of 2.0 is not legal (a client gave it to us because he wanted his stuff done
> in 2.0), and our upgrades won't be coming through NeXT because we can't wait
> as long as they want us to.
> There are plenty of really great people at NeXT (they're all nice), but either
> a) they're way overloaded or b) they really don't know anything or c) they're
> being messed up by bad management :-) and it causes an interesting chaos to
> settle on the company.
> Please don't let all this dissuade you - GO FOR IT - it's great. Just don't
> expect too much from NeXT, Inc., and make sure you forge whatever friendships/
> partnerships you can with other developers to get the resources and info
> you'll need to write compelling apps.wjs@milton.u.washington.edu (William Jon Shipley) (11/19/90)
I've had both good and bad luck getting support from NeXT. When I was just a student, I'd send in bug reports, and get mail back saying, (I'm not making this up) "Thanks for your bug report, it now has tracking number #229039. Please do not send bug reports directly to NeXT, send them instead to your local NeXT representative." Who that was, I never figured out, I just stopped bothering. When I was working at Stanford Linear Accelerator (registered developers), it was great. I'd send bug reports and get prompt and cheery thank-yous, and when I'd ask technical questions (say, about PostScript), I'd get very nice responses, even when sometimes I'd discover what I'd asked was really in the manual. (They never said, "Hey, fool, didn't you read those books you got?") If you are really doing development, I'd say being registered is worth it, because they really do answer their mail. Personally, I don't have the $900 to spend on developer's class, so until some company hires me again, I guess I'll figure things out for myself. -william shipley no longer -sniff- a registered developer