Re: GUI Builder limited to Windows platform (LONG)

[mirko_vukovic(at)notes.mrc.sony.com]

In article <Y8v22.7529$q15.230893@news.san.rr.com>,
  "Pete Riley" <uk2@scibernet.com> wrote:
> Hi Dave,
>
stuff deleted
> But, if UNIX isn't
> paying the bills, and you've got a 450 MHz Pentium II with 1/2 a gig of
> memory and 50 gigs of space then you rule the world...at least in my little
> mind.
>
> -Pete Riley
>

I was unpleasantly surprised when I was not able to get a piece of high-end
electro-magnetic software for a DEC Alpha.  It was made for WIntel, and other
Unixes, but not for DEC.  Similarly, the software we use for 3D magnetic
modeling is first released for WIntel and only then for the Unix boxes.

Puzzled, frustrated, I inquired.  And the answer was simple enough, as if
they were quoting Mr. Gates from his Economist article (a couple of months
back).  Any PC running WIntel will run their codes.  But each Unix vendor's
Unix is different, and requires additional programming effort.

Thus in some sense, the Unix machine vendors have placed themselves in that
unenviable position, with all of their best versions of Unix.  Thus, for
commercial written software, WIntel may be the platform of choice, and the
workstations are left to internally written software.

Possybly the only thing that can bring Unix back to favor with the software
developers is Java.  At a recent Plasma physics conference (Maui, Hawaii :-))
one company was showing a modeling code written in C and the front end in
Java. Actually, written in F90, translated and compiled into C.

My two breaths

Mirko

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