On Saturday, 05-18-1996, MARIO SEMO wrote to STEPHEN ALLEN about
'Taligent development syst:'


MS> maybe it is real strength. but the requirements are Pentium and
MS> 64MB.

You forgot to mention 550 MB of disk space!  (Though to be fair, 430
MB of this is for the development system and is heavily weighted by
the help system and code samples.) A disadvantage for both developers
and users.  BTW, my docs only claim 32MB.  Of course that's what they
say about VAC++, too.  Though maybe this will not seem like such a big
 deal in a few years.

MS> As far as i know, IBM will move a lot of the technology into other
MS> products. I've read the VACPP will include about 200 classes from
MS> Taligent in 4.0 release and they will include some parts in the
MS> BaseSystem.
MS> 
MS>  SA> debuggers, an enormous set of libraries (they say 1900 
MS>  SA> classes with 27,000 member functions) covering vitually 
MS> 
MS> yes. 2 years ago at ColoradOS2 Grady Booch had a session. and he
MS> asked the auditorium about the size of the frameworks they
MS> implement. the number of classes/members and someone cried '3/10'
MS> and one cried '8/20' and one '14/30' and one (vacpp) '200/1000' and
MS> one '2000/27000' the last one was a Taligent developer.

Maybe it's like language.  I have heard that most people only use
3-500 words in their conversation and writing, even though English has
a lot more available!

Still, I doubt if Grady Booch's question allows an apples-to-apples
comparison.  The people answering the question may have been talking
about the *special* classes that they developed to solve their own
business problem.  If you asked them how many of the API's provided by
the operating system they used (knowingly or not), you would obviously
come up with a much greater number.  Or if you asked IBM how many
"class/function equivalents" are built into OS/2 - a ridiculuous
question, I know - but you get the idea.

This is why Taligent is so big.  It is incredibly comprehensive.  I
don't think you can even find class libraries for all the things
Taligent does (the notification or compund document frameworks, for
example) but if you could, it would cost you way more to buy them
separately than IBM is charging.  The ORB and database capabilities
alone might cost you somewhere in the range of $4,000.  Each!

And I find it extemely difficult to believe that you could get class
libraries from fifteen separate vendors to play together successfully.

My question for now is, "Is it real ... or just a vision?"  Details
matter (and so do bugs, speed, etc.)  I'd like to see some reviews or
hear some experiences.

In any case, I hope that Taligent does not become another example of
fantastic technology that withers on the vine.

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