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From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Another great quote from Mr. Good
Message-ID: <399@clio.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 12 Aug 88 05:43:03 GMT
References: <3308@druhi.ATT.COM> <1104@atari.UUCP> <364@bdt.UUCP>
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I dunno 'bout you, but personally, I feel pretty disappointed that an
improvement wasn't made, to accomodate the bad programming practices
of other developers. I don't want to knock the software houses writing
software for the ST's, but really now - these are supposed to be professional
programmers, right? They're supposed to know what they're doing, and when
they later discover a problem with previously written code, don't they have
a responsibility to fix it themselves?

Developers have been clamoring for these bug fixes for an intolerable length
of time. Wouldn't it have been "better" (sorry for such an insubstantial,
abstract term here, but these are really my feelings more than deeply reasoned
thoughts coming out here...) to have fixed the problem and convinced the
folk with ill-behaved code to fix it, and release updates of their own?
Certainly these developers don't expect to simply write a program, test it
a bit, release it, and never be bothered by it ever again, do they? Bitrot is
something we all have to deal with, releasing updates to existing software
shouldn't be considered an especial hardship. It's a common sense expectation,
like a fact of life.

I think this is making a Very Bad statement about Atari. It's telling the
world that they're willing to be less than the best. Not only that, it's
telling people who buy Atari products that they also must settle for less
than the best, or else they should go find some other product to worry about.
This displays the same attitude I dislike so much in Sun. ("You can't afford
a Sun-4/260? No problem, here's a Sun-4/110, cheaper 'cause it's made with
low-spec parts, slower parts, etc. Sun - because you don't always need the
best."

Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised at this. I dunno for sure. When I first
laid my eyes on the ST, I goggled. "Wow, what a slick machine!" I know I'm
not the first to have been fanatically devoted to Atari, and may not even be
the last. The ST was just another amazing work of computing machinery from a
a company I practically worshipped. Why else would people always be starting
"my computer is better than yours" wars - we honestly believed that, yes, this
computer *is* the best. But that attitude is long gone now. Yes, I feel
somewhat disillusioned. Ah well.

I'm not gonna trash all my work on this now, though. It's still a decent
machine, fun to work on, does neat things that no other micro does. But dang,
it's lost the gleam. That spark of ingenuity, that air of superiority, that
excitement is all gone. It's just another box on the market. hohum.

[If you couldn't tell by now, these are Very Definitely my Very Personal
Opinions. Take 'em any way you see fit, while keeping that in mind...]
--
  /
 /_ , ,_.                      Howard Chu
/ /(_/(__                University of Michigan
    /           Computing Center          College of LS&A
   '              Unix Project          Information Systems