Re. [Oberon] PC Makers Hit Speed Bumps - Oberon opportunity

[eas-lab at absamail.co.za]

"Douglas G. Danforth" <danforth at greenwoodfarm.com> wrote:
> The way I see it, sufficient PC speed was passed 2 years ago
> for most of us.  

Absolutely.  A 10 times faster computer, would save me 10 seconds a
day and 100 times faster would save 11 seconds  -- working with n-o.

>The real need is simplicity and reliability.
> I can see a real paradigm shift in how software is distributed
> and maintained.

Well, what is needed has been known and articulated for decades,
but the situation seems not to be getting better.

> (I am currently struggling with HP-UX and Linux using a company
> in-house extension of "make" that coordinates the "build"
> of an executable (a fairly large executable)for different
> unix platforms.  On my slow 50 Mhz HP-UX box to start from 
> scratch and "make" the system takes 25 minutes!  It is 
> making for only one platform. I calculate that to do
> the same "compilation" with Oberon should take 25 seconds!
> This does not include the "load time" for Oberon.)

Yes, I can't understand what linux is doing with all the huffing & puffing.
Of course for an occasional installation, where you can go away for
an hour, waiting for it to finish, it's acceptable.
What really traumatised me was an attempt to write a little bit more
than 'Hello World', which led to a 600 line 'man <compiler ? gcc>' read...
to a n00 line 'man make' read... to a m00 line 'man diff' read ...etc.

For us, linux is important:
*  to see how dispersed collaboration can/can't work,
* possibly copy some of it's openly available algorithms/ideas,
* coming later has the advantage: we can also learn what NOT to do.

-- Chris Glur.