[Coco] CoCo needs?

[James Dessart]

On 8-Mar-05, at 9:21 PM, KnudsenMJ at aol.com wrote:

> Tremendous things have been done with the existing C system -- should 
> we be
> wasting the best talent trying to forge slightly better tools, instead 
> of
> working on apps?  ISTR this argument being raised 10 and 15 years  ago.
>
> Sorry if this sounds argumentative, but I'm confused here.  Remind me  
> why we
> need another C compiler.  Thanks, Mike K.

Because no one who can program in C, in their spare time, is likely to 
use OS-9 hosted development tools. While handy in its time, it does not 
provide a convenient venue for software development, due to a probably 
large number of limitations. Limited editor screen size, the 
inconvenience of switching back and forth if using a CoCo-external 
editor, limited memory, disk space and speed, combined with the 
inconvenience of either using a CoCo straight, or firing up an emulator 
just to write code and compile it. Add to that the fact that any code 
you might want to reuse is in ANSI C, and there are very few reasons to 
stick with an OS-9 hosted development tool.

These are the pragmatic issues which make it such that very few people 
are writing decently cool stuff. All the Cloud-9 drivers, as far as I 
know, are developed and built with a PC or Mac hosted assembler. Boisy 
or Mark correct me if I'm wrong on this. The simple fact of the matter 
is that those of us capable of writing software do not want to work 
within the limitations of a CoCo-hosted development suite, we just want 
to work within the machine's space and speed limitations when dealing 
with our code. The hard part should be the part that makes everyone go 
"wow," not just getting through editing a source code file.

James