Now I know how my final, outgoing column as editor in the last FrameWorks should have ended: old editors never die; they just come back and live on forever as columnists!
Well, forever's a long time, but I'm certainly here for the near term, and definitely in a new capacity: basically, news and good general gossip seem to be the prescription.
Everybody's just back from an exciting week in Phoenix, Arizona, and there was certainly enough going on there to fill up a few pages with news and gossip. Let's jump right in.
The MacApp team came up with a particularly graphic example to demonstrate a good use of DCM: before-and-after versions of the Calc example. One implementation shows a recalculation of Pascal's Triangle without DCM, the other with DCM. The traditional "without" version took about 20 seconds for a complete recalculation, the "with" version was nearly instantaneous.
The demonstration was neat! Apple engineering types obviously thought so too, and showed it off in at least three different sessions during the week. MacApp 3.0 Written in C++! This was the bombshell at the Conference: Steve Friedrich's announcement on day one that MacApp had been totally redone in C++, and that source for 3.0 would only be available in that language and not Object Pascal. Boy, did that get a reaction! This was the most divisive and political issue I've seen come up in over four years of informative and enjoyable meetings between developers and Apple. Talk about some major differences in opinion! This was the main topic of conversation throughout the week.
Friedrich announced that the MacApp team had taken several weeks and converted the whole works over. Which was great news for C++ users, of course, but the intimation was that starting with 3.0, an Object Pascal version of MacApp would no longer be supported. In particular, THINK Pascal users would shortly be unable to use the wonderful debugging features that they were so happily used to. (Note that compiled MPW Pascal code would still certainly be linkable; however, there'd be no way to link with THINK code-at least at present.)
Dave Neal looked a bit shell-shocked, other THINK Pascal developers at the Conference looked none too happy, and Raines Cohen of MacWeek, with his Portable slung off one shoulder, gathered quotable quotes from everybody in sight.
Tom Chavez told me that Apple's put the question out to an independent survey company, which is talking to a good cross-section of MacApp developers in order to get better information on which to base an informed decision, and that the issue should be settled one way or another within a month or so.
My own hunch is that C++ is on its way. I suspect that it probably is a done deal, and that like it or not, Bjarne Stroustrup is going to get a few new users. As they said lovingly in the movie, Poltergeist: It's here!
Dave Wilson asked me to make sure that Mike Lockwood got credit for writing the app, and to point out that he did it in MacApp.
My only pre-session instruction to the panel was that all logic was to be left at the door, and indeed it was, except for Dave Wilson, who got there late and actually tried to talk rationally and make some sense. Boy, was he out of place!
Yes, there was more, but you had to be there (and you will be next year, won't you?). And with that, I think I'll call it a wrap. Take care.
-Katz
