Some senseless babbling from David Noon to Mike Ruskai
on 08 Dec 98  21:28:04 about OS/2 C++ Programming?...

 DN> In a message dated 12-06-98, Mike Ruskai said to David Noon about
 DN> "OS/2 C++ Programming?"

 DN> Hi Mike,

 DN> [snip]
 DN> I wouldn't say that I recommended it. I suppose it's alright if you
 DN> don't have anything better.
 
 MR>EMX generates very tight and fast object code.  Faster than VACPP and 
 MR>Watcom.

 DN> Not in my experience. Both IBM and Watcom produce faster code, even if
 DN> it is rather larger than that produced by EMX. [Does anybody still have
 DN> Peter Fitzsimmons's benchmarks from a few years back?] There is a
 DN> thread in the 80XXX echo on this very topic (fast bloatware, under the
 DN> title "NOP accelerates code") at the moment.

I've got one C++ program right here that is both smaller and faster 
compiled with EMX.  

I'm sure there are other examples that prove the other case, but at the 
very least we can't generalize.
 
 DN> You will have to sign in as a "guest" but you can d/l
most stuff once
 DN> you have done that. It should allow you to d/l the Warp 4 toolkit, but
 DN> some of IBM's Web pages can be confusing. The last guy I told to do
 DN> this ended up with a d/l from Athens owned by IBM Greece. ... :-)))
 
 MR>The toolkit is not available at the Guest level, nor even the Member
 MR>level.  You must pay $300 for the Advanced level to have access to it.

 DN> Les Rhorer, formerly of Fido, was able to d/l the Warp 4 toolkit back
 DN> in September. He is the guy I referred to above. He used Guest level.

I've tried both before and after September (of this year), and it has 
always required Advanced level access.  Unless there was a window in 
September when they changed the requirements, Les must be mistaken somehow.

Or, we're not talking about the same toolkit.

The one I'm talking about is:

http://service2.boulder.ibm.com/devcon/showcase/cat/warptlkt.htm

 DN> [snip]
 DN> Note that so far we have only discussed the C and C++ languages. There
 DN> is much, much more to learn about OS/2 programming, unless you are
 DN> content to limit yourself to command line interface (CLI) programs.
 
 MR>The problem, however, is that there doesn't seem to be any affordable 
 MR>languages other than C/C++.

 DN> ALGOL 68 and FORTRAN 95 compilers for OS/2 seem to be reasonably
 DN> priced in this country. Both suffer from the same lack of tools that
 DN> blights EMX. 

I've not seen any FORTRAN 90+ compilers for OS/2 anywhere.  Who makes it?

 DN> Have you priced the upgrade from VA C++ 3.0 to VA C++ 3.6? The 3.6
 DN> version was not widely touted by IBM as the upgrade price was over
 DN> US$3000. It was strictly a corporate product.

It's not even VAC in that version.  It's IBM C and C++, and the package 
includes the Win32, OS/2, and AIX versions together.  

The price at IB is $1510.

 DN> As a PL/I programmer, I'm getting a kind of deja vu feeling about the
 DN> upgrade price from 3.0 to 4.0, when we finally see VA C++ 4.0 for
 DN> OS/2. 

 MR>PL/I is now obscenely overpriced (I had planned on getting a copy to play
 MR> with - no more, unless I win the lottery).

 DN> Did you try looking for Personal Edition at the site in the message I
 DN> forwarded here a few weeks ago?
 
No.  I don't think I saw that.

Care to repeat it?

Mike Ruskai
thanny{at}home.com


... Ah, Camelot.  Shhhh!
--- Renegade v05-11 Exp