CompuServe Thread

You shouldn't have too much difficulty moving to the Amiga. Right now, there seems to be a vast desert in the area of scientific applications programs, except for some specialized stuff (like VLT terminal emulator developed by/for SLAC). There are representatives from Lattice and Manx here in AmigaForum, as well as for vendors of other languages than C (modula-2, for example). To program the Amiga, you're going to need the set of books called the "ROM Kernal Manuals". There are lots of other reference books, all of which have their followings. Since you're already a Mac developer, it would be A Good Idea for you to get developer status with Commodore,

How glad I am you asked about the Amiga and the scientific community. I am a physical chemist who(at one point in time) specialized in reaction kinematics for radioisotopes. I was at a comvention about 6 months ago(ACS I think) and the topic was 'Computers in Chemistry'. On display there were many mini's to full blown mainframes but one exhibit aught my eye. It was an Amiga(very 'tricked' out as bikers would say) using a $15000 custom piece of software that assembled molecules according to some very sophisticated rules. It was an incredible graphic display plus it was accurate(in other words it wouldn't allow 'forbidden' structures to be formed). I'd have to say that if marketed correctly there are most certainly areas of the scientific community that are ripe for a multitasking machine. Hope this helps you decide.

The Amiga can be an outstanding development platform, and can be highly customized and automated using AREXX (Interprocess Communication Language for the Amiga) and programs like Cygnus Ed Professional or any other text editor that supports AREXX. Black Belt Systems has a new "C" Toolkit available, and others are available from other sources, such as "Lint" from Gimpel Software. As far as the market for scientific application packages, I suggest you contact Wayne Cole or some of the other people in this forum who would love to have something along those lines. I am currently compiling a "wish list" of Amiga Software called the Applications Needed List. I am uploading a compressed version of the list, compressed with LHarc. If you need a text version of the file, let me know, and I'll upload a plain ASCII version as well.

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