[Coco] OS-9 Attributes

[Steve Ostrom]

There are two advantages to writing software for OS9 that I see:

1 - Your software works under the OS9 operating system.  This brings a
world of advantages to the user and to your program.  OS9's universal
I/O and piping mean that your program can accept output from any other
OS9 program and generate input for any other OS9 program (ala
Unix/Linux).  Your program is not an island, it becomes a tool that
can be an integrated part of a very powerful toolset.

2 - Your software has access to OS9's built in system calls.  You can
think of these as similar to using the ROM routines from BASIC, but
much more powerful.  No need to write yet another routine for X.  You
also gain benefits when dealing with all different types of
hardware... basically you don't have to!  You write software that uses
the standard I/O interface and let OS9 worry about specifics.

--

I appreciate all the great comments, and I apologize for hijacking this 
thread.  I've renamed it for this reply.

So on a more personal level, for my advancement only, I can see one main 
advantage for learning to program in OS-9, besides for the pure joy of 
learning another language.  That being the existence of a huge library of 
system calls, so I would not need to write code to do these same things in 
assembly.

Given the above, I can study manuals, learn the basics again, review system 
call libraries and maybe look at other people's code for examples.  Can I 
assume that NitrOS-9 is OS-9 with additional attributes?  Or maybe it is 
said better by asking if OS-9 is a direct subset of NitrOS-9 for coding 
purposes?

There are many instances of Coco OS-9 programmers who write to this list 
with frustrating error messages and scripts that don't seem to work.  Are 
all of these issues answered by documented instructions, or is there still a 
lot of undocumented art in the creation of an OS-9 program?  If I write a 
program, and it does not work as desired, is there readily available 
documentation that I can read to understand why my code did not work?

I do like to work as independently as possible.  As an aside, back when I 
was attempting to write a ML game called QIX for Tom Mix, I was having a 
terrible time trying to figure out how the Extended BASIC PAINT routine 
worked, so I could call that routine from my ML game when the player was 
able to enclose an area.  I eventually asked Bill Barden and Charles 
Rosewell (sp?) for help.  Bill was nice enough to write back that he had 
never used that routine, but Charles did give me some help, which worked 
very well.  I sent Tom my initial game draft, which he liked, and encouraged 
me to continue.  But my wife had just given birth to our first child, and 
time was no longer available for coding.  I told Tom I couldn't finish the 
work, and he asked me permission to have another programmer work on the 
game.  About 6 months later, Tom began selling this other version, and it 
was much better than my draft.  I sold my working but incomplete draft to 
T&D, and they published it soon after.

Thanks again for your opinions about OS-9.  They were indeed helpful.

--- Steve ---