Opinion Article : Amiga DE a Good Idea, Poor Execution

[JetRacer]

I have to agree with other saying this is a bad "article". Commentary is probably more like it.

Secondly, I have to point out that the C language virtually died when software/hardware layers became standard in OS's. There's simply no reason left for using C to create applications. Unfortunately there are no viable options to the
aging C language yet.

And don't try to tell anyone that C is fast. To reach real-time performance the name of the game is assembler. That never changes. All highlevel
languages relys on it.

Tao's intent got cutting edge technology available today. But it's no OS; just bare bones
kernel. AOS got most stuff except cutting edge
kernel technology. It makes good sense to merge
them.

But apart from that, I just see problems pile up.
It's not practical (and probably impossible) to
license Tao's stuff from now until forever. Amiga
Inc will have to point out exactly what role Tao
will have in the future, if any, in order to make
the Amiga community believe in a future beyond
AOS 4.X.

In any case, making future AOS stand and fall
with Tao's kernel support will be a fatal
mistake.

[JetRacer]

Waccoon: Your post is 100% misenterpretations. You didn't get one thing strait. Take a break will ya.

(edit)

I better straiten things out for you.

I never suggested that anyone should write applications in assembler. What I did wrote was that assembler (implied: optimizations) is a
necessity to get high (read: adequate) performance out of virtually any highlevel
language. That applies to games and demos, aswell
as kernels and applications. X86 and PPC.
Especially if we talk C language.

About realtime performance. You got more of a point than you know. To time something so it occurs exactly five seconds later you need high performance to not miss the event alltogether. C is lousy for that, unless it relys on an assembler written/optimized timing routine. But that's just one example. C does not bring performance by any defenition.

I never wrote that Tao owns Amiga. Nor anything like it. Btw, can you imagine Microsoft licensing the kernel from third party..? Nor do I, and that was my concern. Such a thing would simply be irresponsible, unless we're talking non-closed source like Linux (as in kernel), which isn't the case here. And that's about the only thing I 've got against AmigaDE.

(/edit)

[JetRacer]

As some people think C is the only real language for programming I'd like to point out a few things.

Ansi C was outaged a very long time ago. It get's very evident when looking at it's (lack of) support. It's suitable for command line stuff and crude graphics. Apart from that, you need to add to the language by using custom functions. 99.9% of what we see in modern OS's is unsupported. Try porting something from one OS to another and you'll have the same situation that assembler programmers was in in the early days, forcing the creation of the C language in the first place.

Object orientation (C++) was slapped onto C in a way that is simply outrageus. The syntax looks like it was made by a hacker as a pre-alpha for his own personal use, three in the morning still going strong after 24 strait hours of coding. It's simply an unbelievably crappy implementation by any meashure.

There are no viable alternatives yet, but it's important to know that C/C++ has no real future
and lives on borrowed time.

[JetRacer]

@bhoggett: I should have put in a few "for application programming" here and there. Sorry 'bout that. What I meant was: application programming with C/C++ has no future. Software/hardware layers was the final blow to a sinking ship.

Kernel/driver, etc. programming is a completely different matter. That's what C/C++ is really good at. Creating services and writing support for new hardware (with some asm sprinkled at the top).