Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!m2c!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Amiga Futures
Message-ID: <7009@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 11 May 88 20:29:31 GMT
References: <341@unicom.UUCP>
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 87

I'll stand in front of the soapbox and make the observation about some
of the unique aspects of the Amiga.

First, the Amiga's operating system made a whole lot of new things
possible on a micro.  College CS/EE students ate it up; they could
relate to the stuff they were reading about in their OS classes, as
opposed to some of the other micro "operating systems" that are/were
little more than program loaders and interrupt handlers.

It also marked the first time in a long time that a technology-driven
(rather than marketing/solution driven) microcomputer system came out,
and brought back all the micro programmers sick of silly monitors
posing as operating systems.  It also brought in all the mainframe
and mini programmers who wanted a real operating system on a micro.

Sure, it didn't have everything, and still doesn't, and never will,
nor should it.  But it built a unique community of support, almost all
technical, and almost all third-party.  Another thing was that the
company that produced the machine didn't take an ivory-tower approach
to development and support .. they tried to (only to keep the Amiga
developers busy and away from support roles), but the community was
too close, and they (first Amiga, then Commodore) realized what a
great benefit this user community was ... at the time, the user
community was really a developer community.  We all came up to speed
together.  Amiga employees had the jump on us, but that's no longer
true (except that they have the source code).

The Amiga was also the first micro where memory was more abundant
than mass storage .. many people had 2MB RAM and only 2 880K disk
drives, rather than 640K and 20MB disk, or 16MB and 400MB disk.
It spawned a new generation of users and programmers; people who
approached the task of computing at a different angle, since their
resource limits were different.  Some of that is flattening out
now, with the DRAM shortage and more and more mass storage devices
becoming available, but the mindset has been shaped.

Anyway, because the original developers at Amiga loved the machine,
and the developer community loved the machine (OK, so some were more
like love/hate), and because Commodore had little resources for
developing the Amiga market, the technical side kept getting better
and better.  Not perfect ... but there was a lot of interaction
between the Los Gatos folks, CBM development, CBM tech support, and
the developer community.  Probably much more than any other company or
machine available.  In fact, many times the distinctions blur --
third-party packages included in CBM releases, CBM development staff
getting the USENET Boing award (for user support, as I understand it).

To its credit, Commodore does not subscribe to the "Not Invented Here"
attitude like so many other vendors.  It makes the Amiga a unique
machine, and it makes the Amiga a better machine to work with.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and we can talk about lots of the
problems with the Amiga.  And we do.  At length.  But we do more than
just talk about it.  We think about solutions, we describe solutions,
and we create solutions.  They may not be solutions for all of us, but
they are solutions for some of us.  Look at ARP.  ARexx.  Commodities
Exchange.  VD0.  VT100.  Csh.  PopCLI.  FastFonts.  Facc.  ConMan.
Pipe-Handler.  The list goes on.  But these are state-of-the-art
problems as far as micro operating systems go.  We're just making the
machine better.  Perry's and Eric's Amiga Working Group concept is
another example of the Amiga community teaming up with CBM to make
the machine better.  Much more than a user group, AWGs are developer
consortiums, advisors to Commodore.

Now I'll stand on the soapbox.

So there's IPC.  Run-time "resources".  User Interfaces.  Multiple
port handlers and names.  Resource tracking.  All kinds of current
things happening, and lots of people with lots of viewpoints.  But we
can't look at what other people have done and blindly imitate them.
We have to look at what problems they were trying to solve, how they
went about it, how successful they were, and how successful other
schemes were.  Only then can we take the best and improve on it, or
throw it all away and invent something new.

(I hear patriotic sounds in the background.  Is that a flag waving?)

Amiga owners, users and developers have earned a special place in the
evolution of the Amiga.  It's still quite technology driven, which is
upsetting the marketing folks but is a benefit to many of us for now.
We can and should capitalize on this unique position to help define
the direction of the Amiga.  The Amiga has always been a leader, from
day one.  It should continue to lead, not follow.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page