Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pyramid!cbmvax!ditto
From: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Negative Open Counts (was Re: IEEE libraries)
Summary: AmigaOS:  Use Only as Directed
Keywords: open counts
Message-ID: <4772@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 20 Sep 88 02:52:29 GMT
References: <1356@percival.UUCP>  <4736@cbmvax.UUCP> <1596@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Reply-To: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto)
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 61
Warning: this thread is wandering into "the flame zone"...

>In article <4736@cbmvax.UUCP>, I wrote:
[ that every system has *some* limits, even the Amiga.  Other systems
  might have different kinds of limitations ]

... except I said it in a perhaps not-so-nice way, which resulted in:

In article <1596@sbcs.sunysb.edu> root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) writes:
>	(You actually work for Commodore? With your attitude I should hope not)

Remember, attitudes and opinions are not related to those of employers!  :-)

My point was that *any* system has some limitations.  Some of the Amiga's
limitations can not go away in a compatible way.  I don't think there is
anything wrong with the design of the Amiga system as long as *at least*
the software developers know the limitations; the users can (and should)
be kept unaware of internal details of implementation.  Among the critical
things that any developer must know are things which can crash the system.

As long as we have the current system of Amiga hardware and software, there
must exist the rule "programs must never do something which can crash the
system."  Eliminating one (or ten, or a hundred) ways to crash the system
will not allow us to remove that rule.

>	We would have chipped away at ONE of the ways to bomb the Amiga.  We
>	would have set a precedent that we will endeavor make the system more
>	robust rather than taking a GURU.  We will have started to think
>	about tips and techniques to prevent GURU's, etc, etc.

I heartily recommend allowing the system to recover from errors.  But that
is not what was proposed; it was to have the system continue running
without warning when a non-recoverable condition had been detected.  In this
particular example, it would usually allow the system to operate normally.
The end result, however, would be rare, but catastrophic, system failures
without any evidence of cause.  I think that will bother Pournelloids at
least as much as the "Software Error" messages they replace.

I agree that users should be isolated from system internals and that the
system should be as programmer-forgiving as possible.  I don't think it
should do this at the expense of reliability or critical-error reporting.

[ ... ]
>	Neither.  It is better to design the system such that these things
>	do not happen easily.  

All right, but let's talk about *design* then, not "recovery".  Yes, many
of these problems could be eliminated by a new library system design, but
I don't think that's necessary.  There is just a "philosophy" of Amiga
programming which must be kept in mind; it is fairly consistent across
all the parts of the Amiga system, and it works just fine within the scope
it was intended to work in.

-- 
					-=] Ford [=-

	.		.		(In Real Life: Mike Ditto)
.	    :	       ,		ford@kenobi.cts.com
This space under construction,		...!ucsd!elgar!ford
pardon our dust.			ditto@cbmvax.commodore.com

These comments have been the personal opinions of Me, Myself, and I,
and are not related to Commodore-Amiga official policy.