Face to Face about AMIGA
3 min read
AMIGA face to face
A limited band of software developers spent a weekend discussing what the programming community needed to do to get the best from the Amiga. Simon Rockman tagged along…
The Amiga is a complicated beast. When you slip a disc into the side of your 500 you may not appreciate the hours of soul searching which have gone into producing the program.
Programmers of micros have not had to deal with an operating system as complicated as AmigaDos and Intuition chips as advanced as many the machine, and it would be near impossible for any one programmer to understand everything about the Amiga. The Amiga developers need to be coordinated and share solutions to problems.
Commodore, the software house Ariadne and distributor ASAP recently organised a meeting of developers to streamline the flow of information.
The attendees were not expected to cover the entire gamut of the developer community, but they tried to be representative. The majority of developers were working on serious applications for the Amiga 2000. A couple of people represented Compunet and CIX online systems.
IT was felt that to improve communications all developers should use modems. Gail Wellington, Commodore’s genera] manager for worldwide software and product support, and Dr Rahman Haleem, technical support manager for Commodore UK, represented Commodore.
The games software houses were represented by Jez San of Argonaut, who may run one of the smaller software houses but is a big name in the Amiga community. HB systems represented the distributor network and Martin Lowe of The Amiga Centre in Scotland took on the mantle of dealer representative.
David Parkinson of Ariadne demonstrated the advantages of improved developer communication by discussing the different approaches to Amiga programming. While he appreciated that many games need to dispense with the operating system for increased speed and to gain extra memory.
he felt that the machine really shows its true colours when programmed the way it was meant to be used.
He said that too many games adopt the attitude that “it’s macho to kill the operating system – only wimps use an OS”, and that the way AmigaDos is constructed allows for more flexibility.
If the top level of Intuition does not do what the programmer wants, the next step is to address the graphic libraries; below that the programmer can call individual functions. Such an approach coincides with the “house feel” of the Amiga.
Fail to hare the soul of the machine and you will run into problems. David’s talk was solid, if sometimes contentious, showing that he, like most of the people around the table, has a real affection for the Amiga.
Talks were given by representatives of Compunet and CIX. The developers seemed to concur that a dial-up system would make it easier for them Io share information. CIX seemed to offer a more suitable service but lacked local call access. Compunet suffered from slow modems and a user interface which made it difficult to handle large conferences.
A “task force’’ of Jez San (Argonaut). Simon Trammer (Precision) and David Parkinson will help to decide which system should be used.
Source : AMIGA COMPUTING
Source of information – AMIGA Computing of June 1988 – Download of the magazine below:
