Compilers... What did they use before?

[ltstanfo]

Hello Dr.

It's nice to see a fellow Styx fan online. :-)

To answer your questions, the AMIGA never really had a fully IDE for C (the AMIGA was really before C++ but more later).

The most popular commercial C packages of the day were Lattice/SAS C (the most used by developers), Manx C and in later years (after the demise of C=) Haage and Partner developed Storm C.  There were other C compilers but the three I have mentioned were "mainstream" although Manx died out pretty fast (around 1990 or 91 IIRC).  

The earlier C packages were command line compilers and you used an editor to write your code (CED comes to mind).  There were various "patches" written by users and one final patch for Lattice (before they discontinued AMIGA support) that made an early effort at adopting come C++ protocols and had a crude IDE but nothing on the order of MSVC or Borland.

Storm C was perhaps the only AMIGA C compiler to come close (IMO) to what you are looking for but even it is short of a truely IDE like MSVC or Borland.

You can visit the Haage and Partner website (google them) and select the AMIGA catagory.  I think they still sell Storm v4.0.  As for Lattice (my compiler of choice) it is long out of production / support but it turns up from time to time on ebay for reasonable prices and has the most material publised for it (books, FAQs, AMINET stuff, etc...)

I hope this helps you.

Regards,
Ltstanfo

[ltstanfo]

Dr_Righteous wrote:
@ltstanfo

[OT] HUGE fan of Styx.. Even sans Dennis and John (RIP). They play around here several times a year and I go to every show I can! [/OT]

I really miss the "old Styx".  I saw them here in Huntsville twice (the Paradise Tour) and a couple of years ago when they got the replacement singer for Dennis (I don't recall the guy's name, he's OK but it just didn't feel right to me).  I've always loved their stuff from the first plexiglass toilet to their newest stuff.

DICE looks promising... Any thoughts?

Wow!  There's a compiler I haven't used / seen / heard about in quite a while....Dillion C (aka DICE).  It was a nice compiler for its day and the author / developer was a pretty sharp guy.  It's good for a first effort if you can't find a copy of SAS.  For my money, SAS is still the best compiler for the AMIGA (not that I've written a line of AMIGA code in several years).

Good luck with Storm C.  It is the newest compiler for the AMIGA but I never really liked using it.  Nothing specific, it just wasn't my "cup of tea".

Regards,
Ltstanfo

[ltstanfo]

Dr.

You are best to stick with C.  The AMIGA, being built on the UNIX model, was almost exclusively coded in C.  I say "almost" because there were other languages available, Fortran, Pascal, Cobol, Basic, Assembler, etc... but most developers coded in the C arena as that what the folks at C= mostly used.

After the demise of C= there were several interesting attempts at AMIGA programming, most notably "E".  It never really caught on however.

Regards,
Ltstanfo