Philosophical Question - Amiguing

[OlafS3]

A? :-)

[spirantho]

People only voluntarily do things for one of 2 reasons:
A: They are paid to do the thing.
B: They do the thing for fun.

Which one of those do you think applies to Amiga programming?

A & B for me

Best thing is, unlike with most coding for other platforms, I get to do both A and B at the same time with the same project!

[psxphill]

why always the negativity?

It's not a negative view point, it's a neutral view point. It just doesn't tie up with the overly positive view point that people seem to have.
 

Many developers who are left are programming on Windows or for embedded platforms and have "no fear of moving on".

I don't believe anyone who suggests that AmigaDOS is superior to every other operating system is seriously programming on any other platform. But I don't believe there is anybody making a living from programming the Amiga.
 
I can understand people programming for fun & limiting yourself to an ancient architecture makes the challenge even harder. I just don't get people trying to justify it in logical terms.

[OlafS3]

it does not make the "challenge harder" because the system might be more complex but you have much better development environments than on any amiga-platform. That is one of the weaknesses today. I agree that "Amiga" is not superior today even though the system is much more elegant and adaptable than the "more bloated" modern OSs. "Bloated" here means much more overhead and they were programmed for resource-rich environments whereas AmigaOS runs on even limited systems. You can see on AROS 68k how hard it is to get even near the efficiency of AmigaOS 68k.

Modern development environments are what we would need most.

[spirantho]

I don't believe anyone who suggests that AmigaDOS is superior to every other operating system is seriously programming on any other platform. But I don't believe there is anybody making a living from programming the Amiga.
 

I don't think many people are saying it's superior just that it's more enjoyable.. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages.
I agree there are precious few people making a living from programming the Amiga, but it's still perfectly possible to supplement an income with Amiga work if you look in the right places.

[persia]

And I think all of us have our feet in the OSX/iOS/Linux/Android/Windows world that is out there.  We're not Rip van Winkles living in the past.  It's a hobby, how do you judge or justify a hobby?  You don't, you just enjoy it.

[paul1981]

Now the less succinct version :
I think there is a tendency sometimes for people to label things that are "old" as "nostalgic", when it's not correct. For instance:
I have a large record collection, and few CDs.  Is it nostalgia? No, I just prefer the warm analogue sound to the clinical, digital sound of a CD.
I listen to old music, mostly 60s and 70s. Nostalgia? No, I wasn't even born then. I just think it's more rewarding (give me some nice Rock, Prog, Jazz or something over modern music any day)
My favourite film is "The Producers" from 1967. Nostalgia? No, it's just an awesome film.
My wife spent most of the evening playing Sonic on the Megadrive. Nostalgia? No, it's just a very good game.
My favourite platform of choice is the Amiga. Nostalgia? No, it's just an awesome platform to use and develop on.

+1

I couldn't have put it better myself. Plus, as a side note, there's more detail in those grooves than any digital audio format.

[hbarcellos]

Have you ever tried to do a List, Rename, Delete, or Copy with those other OSes?

Yep, I just press F2.

In 2013 all Amiga MUI software is vastly superior to all WinozeXP, Windows 7, and Linux software.  Amiga MUI software allows the user to actually change the damn fonts (or just change the size) to a readable size/style without having the text flow outside the window like always happens on my WindozeXP box.  Software on Windoze and Linux is downright user hostile in its Nazi-Stalinist-Dictatorial GUIs of "Do it the way I hardcoded it OR DIE!"
Amiga MUI software allows every aspect of the GUI to be user controlled and customized and is lightyears ahead of Linux, Unix, BSD, WindowsXP, Windows7, etc. in 2013.

Well, I'm not a hardcore modder of the OS look & feel. But, common sense tells me that assuming that: 1) You can code in ASM and +  2) Linux/kde/gnome/xfce, for example, are all Open Source and Amiga is not = You can probably customize every little tiny aspect of a linux box way more than you could dream on an Amiga.

Or how about filesearching.  I had a 2TB harddrive that I had to repeatedly search for the existence of files.  I had to do hundreds of searches.  It was ridiculously slow.  Every search took 24 to 30 minutes on my 1500 Mhz PC.

So I used a search program (with fancy pattern matching) that I wrote in asm on the Amiga back around 1990 for BBSes.  It completed each search in around 7 seconds on my 50Mhz 060.

So, I bet you tried to adapt your ASM code to 8086, right? It was still 257x slower than your WindozeXP?? Or you just refuse to code for 8086?

And finally, I couldn't agree more with Art:

If it's about nostalgia, I don't think it is any less valid.

We all have our reasons. What's important is not finding a common cause for it.

[hbarcellos]

There are a lot of examples everywhere:


Can you find someone saying that this car is faster than a Bugatti Veyron? (a.k. Mr. ChaosLord)

But I bet there are several saying that the experience of driving one of those is better.

[OlafS3]

There are a lot of examples everywhere:


Can you find someone saying that this car is faster than a Bugatti Veyron? (a.k. Mr. ChaosLord)

But I bet there are several saying that the experience of driving one of those is better.

No but if you would put in the same engine as the bugati then you would blast the bugati from the road :-)

the difference is efficency. Of course you have today much better hardware (or using your analogy a much better engine) so efficency is not needed anymore. And you have direct access to the "engine" without layers between so you can add some PS :-)

[gertsy]

+1

I couldn't have put it better myself. Plus, as a side note, there's more detail in those grooves than any digital audio format.

Yes, including resonance and noise. But detail none the less. Most of us cloth eared gits (over 25) cant hear above 15Khz anyway.  Which has benefits 'cos we cant hear the high pitched squeal of our 1084s.
But analogue certainly provides a different sound timbre.

On topic: perhaps we just don't like to see something that gave us so much interest and pleasure go the way of the Dodo.  So perhaps its more psychological than philosophical....

[spirantho]

Off topic:
A good record player and a good record will have very little noise or resonance, and the detail is astounding - especially when compared to a CD. Admittedly you need a really good set-up, but it's quite possible (my Linn set-up being an example!)

On-topic:
Honestly, it's not psychological. It's not philosophical. It's not pathological, and it's not pataphysical.
It's just that some of us enjoy using Amigas more than we enjoy other computers. That's it. Really! There's no hidden meaning, no secret desires of surreptitious ambitions, we just simply prefer using an Amiga!

[Mrs Beanbag]

No but if you would put in the same engine as the bugati then you would blast the bugati from the road :-)

You would blast yourself from the road, I suspect.

[hbarcellos]

No but if you would put in the same engine as the bugati then you would blast the bugati from the road :-)

the difference is efficency. Of course you have today much better hardware (or using your analogy a much better engine) so efficency is not needed anymore. And you have direct access to the "engine" without layers between so you can add some PS :-)

Hmmm, there are other improvements as well, not only the engine.
About "Direct Access", I agree. But the reason why they don't do that anymore (IMHO) (Windows, at least) is because they have to support a very large selection of hardware. It's impossible to do unless you have some abstraction layers. But, I think we might be moving away from that. Apple seems to be heading to that direction constructing iOS. At a certain level, they know exactly what to expect and they would be able to use more the true power of the hardware...

[commodorejohn]

Or perhaps because they enjoy it? It's a HOBBY after all :rolleyes:

No, it couldn't possibly be that. If people were using it because they knowingly admire or enjoy it, then we couldn't sneer at them for being irrational, scaredy-cat recidivists!

[OlafS3]

You would blast yourself from the road, I suspect.

Propably... but it would the fastest drive of all times :-)