Re: Appeal to IBM for VisualAge productline to Linux

[Ronald van Loon <ronald@and.nl>]

|"> products. Great stuff - exactly something that could give Linux an extra
|"> boost. I would like to ask everyone on this list to send IBM an e-mail
|"> (http://www.ibm.com/Assist/ ; if you want to know more about it,
|"> http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/visualage_c++/)
|"> 
|"> This is what I send them; I encourage you to send the same or similar; by
|"> making our wishes known, we could win ourselves an important ally.
|"
|"I would just like to add that everything is not always as good as it might
|"seem. I used VAC++ about a year ago under OS/2. The software recommended
|"at least 32M of ram, and stated that you needed 64 megs to realistically
|"use the visual tools. The compiler proper was so-so, I can't compare it to
|"gcc because I haven't used gcc enough yet. But compared with Watcom and
|"High C++ it didn't fare too well. 

Well, let me put it this way: I have extensive experience with various
C++ compilers, but this was the first time that 'Visual' actually meant a
way of programming, instead of just a buzzword. I can't comment on the
quality of the code generated, but in the live(!) demonstrations I saw, the
ease of generating UIs is high.

I did ask for an evaluation version, of course.

Also keep in mind that I saw the demonstrations performed on Laptops running
Windows NT. As most laptops are not normally equipped with lots of memory, I
wonder about the 64M claim:

Memory requirements for Win95 (add 4 MB for Win NT): 

       C development: 
              8 MB RAM minimum 
              12 MB RAM recommended 
       C++ development 
              12 MB RAM minimum 
              16 MB RAM recommended 
       C++ Visual development 
              16 MB RAM minimum 
              24 MB RAM recommended 

|"The Windowing Class Library (OCL I think it's called now) looked nice,
|"very modern C++ with good cross platform capabilities. It did have poorish
|"docs when I was looking at it. 
|"
|"Since then VAC++ has become basically the defacto OS/2 compiler, mostly
|"because everyone else dropped support for their compilers on OS/2. 
|"
|"The only two things that I think Linux could benift from the VAC set is
|"the debugger (it was very nice looking, but slow and buggy) and the Visual
|"Devel tools -- which were very nice but slow (and probably buggy ;>).

What I have seen of the debugger and profiler seemed to be very
sophisticated; if I had something like that for Linux right now, I'd be a
very happy camper. gprof is nice, but it offers little or no tuning
capabilities.

|"Now, I might be biased, I evaluated the beta of the program one year ago
|"and was so unimpressed by it that I didn't even look at the release. My
|"Os/2 friends that did buy it confirmed that the release wasn't all that
|"much better.. Version 4 which I think has been released for windows I
|"haven't even looked at, so I will make no comments.

I still think the Linux community would benefit greatly from an application 
suite such as VisualAge - having a major company like IBM committing
themselves to Linux would be a great incentive for other companies to follow
suit.

Ronald van Loon (ronald@and.nl)

"I am waiting as fast as I can! I want patience, and I want it *NOW*!"
                                                     - Bethany J. Parkhurst