Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: emacs, etc.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 20:48:43 EDT

In a message dated 00-09-05 18:19:15 EDT, you write:

<< Microsoft makes it hard for people to develop applications that
run well both on Windows and non-Windows. >>
Whereas Linux, say, makes it easy to develop something that runs on that 
system as well as Windows and Macs? Hooohah! 
My problem is not with Windows (etc.) per se but with the fact -- to continue 
the example -- that of the seven critters I have called BASIC no program 
written and running well in one will run under any of the others. (None of 
them are really BASIC either, but that is another point -- though none of 
them run the real stuff, either) With the exception of GM- and Q-, these 
programs did not come with the machines but are produced by outside 
providers, who provide similar services for at least various Apples as well 
as DOS machines. But, in fact, programs written in such a BASIC for a DOS 
will not run on the same company's "equivalent" system for another machine, 
either. I had similar experiences with Forth (an anti-establishment 
programming language, it says) and Pascal. I don't see the evil hand of MS 
in all this, I'm afraid, though I do wonder how the designers of Java managed 
to avoid the problems (aside from simple competence, that is -- but then I 
don't exactly understand how Java works so competence may not be an issue) 
that have foundered every programming langauge since Fortran I: the need not 
merely to recompile or interpret each program for a new platform but to 
rewrite it from scratch -- even in the "same langauge". Overcoming this 
"little problem" would go a long way toward relieving the general problem of 
which I have complained: too much stuff for the peripheral systems like unix 
etal and nothing for the central systems, which most people (by a factor of a 
1000 remember) have. A program in that could be compiled or interpreted on 
any system (as the corresponding names falsely suggest they all can) would 
take care of that more or less immediately, at no increase in price. And we 
would all be happy. Failing that, I would like to see a bit of work on the 
central systems, for myself and for the possibility of taking Lojban out to 
the world.