Re: Programming the IIgs

[nathan@parka.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <C072196010503.6213@darkcastle.ecore.fnet.org>,
Dark_Dude <Dark_Dude@darkcastle.ecore.fnet.org> wrote:
>>I'd recommend the ORCA products.  I haven't upgraded to the newest

>I have ORCA/M v 1.something, and could upgrade it. 

   Good idea if you want to integrate asm with other stuff.

>But what higher language should I start with? C or Pascal?

   C is a lot more powerful, but can definitely be more confusing.  If
you like assembly, you'd probably want to start off with C; Pascal's
formality and excessive typing can get annoying real fast. If you
dislike asm, but you want somehting where the computer guides you a
little better, start with Pascal. This is probably true in general.

   On the GS, this used to be complicated by the fact that the C
compiler was pretty dang buggy. [No reports on the Pascal compiler so
either 1) nobody used it enough to find any bugs or 2) It was
relatively bugfree]. It was said that if you wrote stuff from scratch,
you probably wouldn't run into the bugs. [Me, being a bugmagnet, found
that to be rather untrue..] Fortunately, the latest Orca/C, 2.1, works
great for the code which broke 2.0.3. [Simple 32-bit math broke it.
That shouldn't happen]

   In short, if you do decide to go with Orca/C, be sure to either use
v1.3 or 2.1. The rest of the versions have so many quirks and
annoyances that developing with them can be hellish.

Nathan Mates


--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
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# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein