sfrank@orion.oac.uci.edu (Steven Frank) (12/29/89)
Has anyone succeeded in porting g++?
jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (01/01/90)
/* Written 6:16 pm Dec 28, 1989 by sfrank@orion.oac.uci.edu in uxa.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.next */
/* ---------- "Re: Port of g++" ---------- */
>Has anyone succeeded in porting g++?
As I have seen this question several times in the past, I was curious, why would
anyone want to port g++ to the NeXT?
Michael Rutman
SoftMedeps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (01/01/90)
In article <246300081@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >As I have seen this question several times in the past, I was >curious, why would anyone want to port g++ to the NeXT? For the same reason they're clamoring for X Windows, MS-DOS emulation and floppy disk drives. They just don't understand. (Although there is merit in being able to say one has the complete GNU suite running on any particular platform, that's not the point. The problem is when Marketing departments perceive requests for the hideous, wretched things that crippled other products as "consumer demand" and destroy what otherwise would have been an outstanding achievement. What do you get when you "follow" everyone else because it's "safe" and punish originality and creativity? 90% of what's on the market! America once had a reputation for ingenuity and excellence. Japan, et al. didn't "do us in." We did it to ourselves. It's not too late to break the cycle.) As I understand it, NeXT is going to return their gcc with the Objective-C support to FSF, in which case I concur--why bother with g++? (In the absence of a LARGE amount of preexisting code written with g++ in mind, a/k/a "the FORTRAN argument.") -=EPS=- standard disclaimer
spl@mcnc.org (Steve Lamont) (01/02/90)
In article <213@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: >In article <246300081@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >>As I have seen this question several times in the past, I was >>curious, why would anyone want to port g++ to the NeXT? > >For the same reason they're clamoring for X Windows, MS-DOS >emulation and floppy disk drives. > >They just don't understand. (Although there is merit in being >able to say one has the complete GNU suite running on any >particular platform, that's not the point. The problem is when >Marketing departments perceive requests for the hideous, wretched >things that crippled other products as "consumer demand" and >destroy what otherwise would have been an outstanding >achievement. Um... "consumer demand" as in "able to sell it to someone who wants to buy it?" Now, I'm not a big X fan and can live without MS-DOS, I can see why one *might* want to be able to read other media than that provided (shall I venture to say mandated?) by NeXT. People have invested millions of hours and dollars in creating datasets that live on lesser media, such as floppies, and until such time as the media are made completely obsolete, there will be a need for some way of accessing them. Consider how long it took for punched cards to more or less completely leave the scene. Now you may believe that those who used cards when other media were available were retrograde technological mossbacks -- and maybe they were -- but they were the "customer." It was up to the market to serve their needs -- and, maybe, to move them toward some more modern and tractable medium, such as magnetic tape or disk. For some this process was fairly trivial, for some it was a rather large effort. In either case, there had to be some form of transitional vehicle by which to move from one medium of storage to another. Hence, in the case of tab cards, a card reader in the machine room. As far as X Windows, it turns out that whether we happen to like X or not, there are a flock of very good and very important applications already written that make use of it and until there is a groundswell of applications that live more comfortably in the NeXT environment, X will be a useful tool. In this particular site, there is a Cray Y-MP, a Convex, a flock of Suns, two SGIs, and a Stardent Titan, as well as four NeXTs. I don't think it is too much to ask to provide users with remote and distributed computing tools. It turns out that we will be developing NeXT based distributed applications tools here, but until those are completed, X would sure make life a little easier. It is easy to take a dogmatic stand about the purity of one's product and approach. It is also quite easy to go bankrupt by ignoring the needs of the marketplace, as antediluvian as they might be. Personally, I think NeXT has to work on getting a *real* processor into their cube, one that has enough power to get out of its way -- like the Maggotbox -- er -- Macintosh, it is grossly underpowered in relation to the complexity of the software it has to push. > ... America once had a reputation for >ingenuity and excellence. Japan, et al. didn't "do us in." We >did it to ourselves. It's not too late to break the cycle.) I have to take issue with this stance, although this is probably the wrong forum to do it in. America may have had the reputation that you ascribe to it. However, I submit to you that this reputation was won more or less by default. At the conclusion of World War II, the economies of Europe and Japan lay pretty much in ruins, both literally and figuratively. The United States was relatively untouched by the physical ravages of the war and, besides, had pumped up its economy through the building of the war machine. It was easy to be Number One when Number Two was so far behind. Over the last forty or so years, the economies of Europe and, particularly, Japan have rebuilt. It just isn't so easy to be Number One across the board any longer. It hurts the ego to be Number Two -- or frequently, now, Number N, where N is a large two digit number -- after being Number One for nearly five decades. I'm afraid that we, as a culture, are going to have to get used to it. This, of course, doesn't mean that we, as a culture, should give up. What it means is that we should learn to *cooperate* with one another, both within our own cultural community and internationally, and disabuse ourselves of this rather silly sophomoric notion of being Nubmer One. [I realize that you didn't say anything in your text about being Number One, but I felt that the meaning was implicit. If I have misinterpreted your words, I withdraw my remarks beforehand.] spl (the p stands for peter piper pushed a pail of pixels) -- Steve Lamont, sciViGuy EMail: spl@ncsc.org NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 "Reality involves a square root" Thomas Palmer
rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini) (01/02/90)
In article <246300081@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >As I have seen this question several times in the past, I was curious, why would >anyone want to port g++ to the NeXT? G++ runs on more machines than ObjectiveC and far more people are writing code in that language. The major exception is interactive graphical interface toolkits, which there are a zillion of in OOPs, so NeXT people should stick with the best: NeXTStep.
williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams) (01/02/90)
In article <5970@alvin.mcnc.org> spl@mcnc.org.UUCP (Steve Lamont) writes: >> ... America once had a reputation for >>ingenuity and excellence. Japan, et al. didn't "do us in." We >>did it to ourselves. It's not too late to break the cycle.) > >I have to take issue with this stance, although this is probably the wrong >forum to do it in. America may have had the reputation that you ascribe to >it. However, I submit to you that this reputation was won more or less by >default. Three brief points: 1. America has only consistently led the world in grand scale stupidity, greed and arrogance, since the second world war (witness Panama, & Central America in general). Technological and Industrial superiority has been spotty. The point Steve Lamont made about superiority after WWII being a result of Europe and Japan being trashed is apt. You can always be technologically superior to someone you've bombed back to the stone age. 2. Try comparing production code (i.e. the boring stuff that makes cash register works, etc.) written by Japanese and American programmers, and you'll stop worrying about software superiority. I'm sure (and I sure hope!) there are exceptions to this, but I've never seen silliness like I've seen in japanese written source. The europeans are probably at parity, or ahead in software. We have an advantage in that we have English as our language. Try imagining writing a program in which all the keywords are in Tagalog! 3. It's all moot anyway. This is one world, and anything that benifits country X will, in the long term benefit country Y. Nationalism is a convoluted form of self-destructiveness. The original thread of this discussion had to do with G++. I am in favor of someone (other than me) doing a port, and coming up with a set of classes that map to the ObjectiveC classes, just because I do know C++, and I don't know ObjectiveC. If I get a minute ;-> I'll learn ObjectiveC, but until then, G++ would be nice, and philosophy be hanged. Discussions of relative merits of the two languages belongs in comp.languages, or alt.religion -- "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking Kent Williams part that wonders what the part that isn't williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu thinking isn't thinking of" - TMBG
erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) (01/03/90)
In article <213@toaster.SFSU.EDU>, eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: > In article <246300081@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >As I have seen this question several times in the past, I was > >curious, why would anyone want to port g++ to the NeXT? > > For the same reason they're clamoring for X Windows, MS-DOS > emulation and floppy disk drives. > > They just don't understand. Are you willing to concede that maybe--just maybe-- they do understand something? If not, save your time and go to the next message. > (Although there is merit in being > able to say one has the complete GNU suite running on any > particular platform, that's not the point. The problem is when > Marketing departments perceive requests for the hideous, wretched > things that crippled other products as "consumer demand" and > destroy what otherwise would have been an outstanding > achievement. What do you get when you "follow" everyone else > because it's "safe" and punish originality and creativity? > 90% of what's on the market! America once had a reputation for > ingenuity and excellence. Japan, et al. didn't "do us in." We > did it to ourselves. It's not too late to break the cycle.) (I won't respond to the Japan-bashing as I don't find that fruitful.) > As I understand it, NeXT is going to return their gcc with the > Objective-C support to FSF, in which case I concur--why bother > with g++? (In the absence of a LARGE amount of preexisting > code written with g++ in mind, a/k/a "the FORTRAN argument.") > > -=EPS=- > standard disclaimer Sorry, I disagree. Why would you want LISP on the NeXT? Come on, this language dates back to the 50s. Why? Because it is useful to many people for solving problems using a computer. LISP is also standardized, with Common LISP and CLOS (Common LISP Object System), so that people who have learned LISP on other systems (be they Symbolics or PCs) can transfer that knowledge to the NeXT and use that knowledge in solving problems. Why do people use these computers? To solve problems. (I know few people who can afford a NeXT merely to play games. There is usually some other reason involved.) The NeXT, with many software features built in, has many tools to help solve problems using the computer. There is no reason to decry those who want other tools as well, in addition to the fine tools provided by NeXT. In particular, G++ is a freely-distributable implementation of C++ (an object-oriented superset of the C language) from the GNU project. While Objective-C is also an object-oriented superset of C, the two langauges are not the same. Regardless of whatever position you take in the C++/Objective-C wars, many people have invested a large amout of time learning C++ and they may want to use those skills on the NeXT. C++ does seem to have an edge in the object-oriented wars (a much larger playfield than just Objective-C vs. C++). By the way, since you don't seem to like C++/G++, are you also against the following languages being ported to the NeXT: Smalltalk, Simula or Eiffel? And how about Modula-2, Ada, Oberon or Pascal? (You already have C, why would anyone ever want to use any other procedural language? :-) The NeXT offers LISP, a language very popular in Artificial Intelligence circles (especially in the USA). What about Prolog? You already have LISP, so who needs Prolog? :-) (Prolog seems to be very popular in Europe, much more popular than in the USA.) The X Window System is a graphical windowing system that runs on virtually every type of computer--from PCs (IBM PCs, Amigas, Macintoshes) to Cray supercomputers. X provides a standard protocol to distribute graphical applications over a network (I'm writing this message right now on a Sun SPARCStation as my X display server, and remotely logged in into a Hewlett-Packard 320--which runs our Usenet software.) X provides a portability not found with any other graphical windowing system. NeXTStep is now available only for the NeXT and IBM's yet-to-be-released RIOS workstations (correct me if I am wrong). NeWS is available on Suns and a few other systems (Silicon Graphics for example, I believe). X is available. X is portable. X is free (via FTP) or rather inexpensive (when ordering a tape from MIT or ISC, et al.). Many vendors have released their own implementations of X (for example, Hewlett-Packard and DEC), so if I don't like MIT's version, I can go somewhere else. Sun has even merged their proprietary windowing system (NeWS) with X11 (called OpenWindows), so you can get the best--and the worst--of both systems. Don't get me wrong, X has many faults. But so far, the advantages far outweigh the faults. In particular, I don't like a lot of the complexity nor the size of X (and X applications), but I respect software that can provide solutions on many, many different platforms. And, when I need a solution to be able to run on an HP, a Sun, a Data General, et al., I see X as the only choice available today. Others will have similiar reasons for wanting to run MS-DOS software (remember there are millions and millions of those buggers, however braindead they may be), or an inexpensive means of software distribution (hence the cry for floppies on the NeXT). If you use the NeXT, a cheap software distribution mechanism is good. You should want a lot of people to buy the NeXT (lowering costs with volume) and a lot of companies to produce software for the NeXT. In summary then, many people need (or perceive a need for) many different tools. Just because the NeXT offers some tools, it does not mean that those tools are the only appropriate tools for all users of computers (or all users of the NeXT). Remember, if the NeXT is to be successful, you want these other tools to be ported to the NeXT (if people are using these tools on the NeXT, remmember they are using--and buying--the NeXT). Have fun, -Eric -- Eric F. Johnson, Boulware Technologies, Inc. 415 W. Travelers Trail, Burnsville, MN 55337 USA. Phone: +1 612-894-0313. erc@pai.mn.org - or - bungia!pai!erc (We have a very dumb mailer, so please send a bang-!-style return address.)