CompuServe Messages

Missing Jean-Louis already, eh? As a professional Mac programmer who owns an Amiga2500 at home, I can sympathize with your decision to switch. The so called "computer for the rest of us" has turned into just another $10,000+ workstation. Oh well, canning the ideology and getting to replying to your questions… Market for Scientific Applications packages: The amiga has a far better reputation in the scientific community than it has within the business community. Still it is a low visibility marketplace compared to the Mac. Of course this typifies scientific 'vertical' applications in general, unless your name happens to be Wolfram. Quality of Development Environment: What I've seen of Amiga development environments (I use Lattice 5.0) are very strong TRADITIONAL C environments, using make, link, cc and stuff. Since you say you have a good grounding in UNIX, this should be no problem. I've yet to see anything on the Amiga that rivals Symantec's Think (formerly Lightspeed) C's simplicity and ease of use. I do hope to write a shareware shell that should do the trick for Lattice, but it's currently in a pre-vaporware state. If you are looking for that kind of environment, look into Manx, I think it's a little closer. A large number of programmer's utilities, of the UNIX ilk and others, exist as public domain and shareware. Check out this Forum's Libs (C Language and Toolbox) for a good sampling. Getting up to speed: With a combined UNIX/Mac background you should have no problem adapting to the Amiga. I'd put the learning curve around half of going UNIX to Mac. (That's my own background.) The amiga does seem to be a little less forgiving, but maybe it's just that I'm still more familiar with the mac. One recommendation: Check out Abacus's book "Amiga C for Advanced Programmers" (Bleek, Jenrich and Shulz) ISBN 1-55755-046-8. THis book is perfect for programmers who don't want to be taught C all over again in order to learn how to program the Amiga. (I hate spending time with 'How to use printf'.) As for picking up more information on dev tools: Scan BBSs, go to local Amiga Shop or Bookstore and buy every Amiga mag they have. Read voraciously. That's what I do. Geof Dale/Crosfield Lightspeed