From: anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Programmers should move from mac to NeXT
Message-ID: <ANDERSON.90Nov14082500@sapir.cog.jhu.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 90 13:25:00 GMT
Sender: news@umd5.umd.edu
Distribution: comp
Organization: Dept. of Cognitive Science, The Johns Hopkins University
Lines: 75
Posted: Wed Nov 14 14:25:00 1990



Most of the recent discussion in this group about comparisons between
macs and the NeXT machines has focused on (a) price and (b) raw
performance. With respect to price, it seems clear that those who
cannot possibly spend $3000 or more won't be getting a NeXT soon,
while those who can and who value MIPS and MFLOPS above all should
prefer a NeXT over a IIsi, IIci or IIfx.

Users who only want a machine in order to "run applications" out of
the shrink-wrapped box will probably not give up their macs now, since
the number (though not always the quality....)  of such applications
that run off the shelf is substantially higher than even the
optimistic projections of the NeXT Software & Peripherals catalog.
Alas, there's no NeXTinTax yet.

However, those users who intend to use their machine even just some of
the time for the development of new applications will surely find the
NeXT world to be a better one (always assuming their financial
circumstances are such as to make this a real matter of choice). Both
the software environment and the range of bundled software tools
provided by NeXT make it possible to do novel and productive things in
vastly less time and with vastly less hassle than on a mac. It seems
to me that readers of UseNet news are somewhat more likely to fall
into this category than the average mac user.

And it is precisely programmers who ought to be sensitive to another
relevant issue, which I'm quite surprised not to see discussed more
here: the fact that supporting Apple, for a programmer, is a form of
shooting oneself in the foot so long as Apple is agressively pursuing
legal actions whose purpose is to limit your freedom to write the best
software you can. Of course, the specific claims in the infamous
look-and-feel lawsuit may or may not impact the specific software you
want to write today, but the more basic principle which Apple is
attempting to establish would inevitably affect virtually all
programmers. To quote from a statement of the League for Programming
Freedom [1]:

  "Look and feel" lawsuits aim to create a new class of
  government-enforced monopolies broader in scope than ever before.
  Such a system of user-interface copyright would impose gratuitous
  incompatibility, reduce competition, and stifle innovation.

Programmers who attempt to develop on macs under A/UX find that the
range of available tools there is almost derisory, and what there is
is not up to date or fully functional. To have a useful C-compiler,
debugger or even a decent programming editor, it has been necessary to
port the work of the GNU project to A/UX: even Apple's developers use
GNUemacs and gcc. Reading about the reasons for which FSF/GNU does not
support this effort, or even condone it (though they do not directly
block or forbid such work on the part of others) has made many
programmers see that they really ought not to support Apple; but if
the only alternatives are MS-DOS machines or pure UNIX boxes, there
hasn't seemed to be much of a choice.

But of course there IS a choice. The NeXT offers an environment which
is every bit as easy to use as the mac, every bit as powerful as the
UNIX box, and as close to ideal from the programmer's point of view as
is likely to be seen in the real (commercial) world. And with a clear
performance edge over comparably priced Apple hardware.

Programmers have been looking for ways to avoid supporting Apple and
its advocacy of interface copyrights, software patents, etc. (or if
they haven't, they should have been....). Now there is a clear and
viable alternative that programmers should embrace and encourage, the
NeXT. Support your right to develop the best programs you can: move
from the monopolistic mac to the NeXT.

Steve Anderson

[1] more information about the League for Programming Freedom can be
obtained from its offices at 1 Kendall Square, #143, P.O. Box 9171,
Cambridge, MA 02139, tel. (617) 243-4091; or send internet mail to
league@prep.ai.mit.edu. A number of informative documents on these
issues can be retrieved via ftp from the directory u2/emacs/lpf on
prep.ai.mit.edu.