| From: | Jesse McClusky |
| Date: | 28 Sep 2000 at 21:38:09 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: The SDK (was: The Windoze SDK) |
> From: "Juan Carlos Marcos Rodr�guez" <jcmarcos@datavoice.es>
>
> I see the SDK for Windows is coming, and that's just fine, as it will break
> a very important resistance for the new Amiga to get through the masses (me
> included). It's a pity it also breaks Bill's word "no money to Microsoft",
> but it's only a logical course.
I disagree. The "no money to Microsoft" means that Amiga Inc won't
be providing MS software to anyone directly. It doesn't mean they'll
snub all those who already have it. I see it as following in the Amiga
spirit, which is what Amiga is all about. It's about options, ease-of-use,
and convenience. It's about computers being more available because
they're less intrusive. Forcing people to change operating systems
from what they're comfortable with is directly opposed to that
philosophy. And, as is uinfortunate but obvious from some of the
discussion on this list, many developers see a SDK on a platform
and immediately think, "This is the only platform it supports."
Add to that the fact that many development firms won't even
look at something unless it's available for Windows, together with
the fact that Windows is on (as Gary said) about 85% of the
PCs in the world, and you can see that the only course of action
is to provide an SDK for Windows as soon as possible. But
they also knew that it would be an insult to the existing Amiga
community (most of whom actively hate the Dark Empire) if
the only SDK available for months required paying money to
MS. Which is why (among other reasons) they provided the
Linux SDK first.
Another thing to keep in mind here people is that the SDK you
see right now is only an *initial* SDK. Something for you to
start playing around with. In the final SDK, you won't have to
see nearly any of the guts you're seeing right now. There's a
whole other layer that's being built on top of it that provides
*so* much convenience, you'll think you were having a casual
conversation with your computer instead of programming it.
(Okay, so not quite that far yet; give us 5-10 years.) (:
This doesn't mean you won't be able to get to the stuff that
you see right now. Just like in the Classic Amiga, you have
the option of going as deep as you need to, or as shallow
as you need to. You can get down into the guts of things
for the graphics and sound on that game you're writing,
while making use of the other convenience features such
as object persistence and the user-customizable input-
mapping side of the interface. Or you could write an
editor for HTML that can be embedded in any other
app, just using the interface convenience features and
not having to worry about the presentation details. It's
an "as-much-or-as-little-as-you-need" environment for
both the user and the programmer.
> > envision a run-time environment that is so small you can
> > sell a CD of YOUR applications, games, etc along with this
> > run-time environment and know that it will load and run on
> > Windows, Linux, etc.
>
> What can Amiga do to ease the *installation* issues that might appear?
> Alright, my program will run on top of AmigaDE no matter what other software
> is supporting it. But will Amiga provide and guarantee that AmigaDE will
> take care of its own installation?
(...on a specific platform, I assume you mean.)
It should, otherwise, what's the point?
If an Amiga application doesn't install pretty much
like any other native app for the system it's being
installed on, wrapper or no, it's going to confuse
at least some of the users. Which means tech
support calls. Which means it costs more for the
developer. Which means less developers will use
it. A form of trickle-up economics. (:
Jesse
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