3 ms·

Coding GUI apps was a nightmare.

mrandish 2y ago
Sure but at least it shipped with an OS that had a GUI and multitasking in an era when the vast majority of personal computers had neither. Let's not forget how early this was. Any personal computer that shipped with a GUI OS at the time shipped it in a state that wasn't yet fully realized or completely documented. Everyone was still figuring out what a GUI OS should be. It wasn't until years later when Unix-based workstation OSes migrated down to consumer desktops that things started stabilizing. Before that we were pioneers roughing it on the frontier. I had an Amiga 1000 and did hobby programming on it starting in 85. At the time everything friends and I wrote only used the OS to open a custom screen because all the fun was experimenting with graphics. Most of the apps for the first couple years either used the CLI or just put up a window with a few drop downs and otherwise rendered their own UX inside it.
- amichail 2y ago
  I think I would have been better off with a PC, Turbo Pascal, and no GUI programming to distract me from more interesting hobby coding.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > Any personal computer that shipped with a GUI OS at the time shipped it in a state that wasn't yet fully realized or completely documented You are forgetting Apple. By the time the Amiga was introduced it was pointing the way GUIs were going for the next decade. The one thing it didn’t have was multitasking, which came in 87 with Multifinder. The Amiga was more powerful and I wish it had an OS based on Coherent, which was scheduled for the CBM 900, rather than what ended up being AmigaOS.
rbanffy 2y ago
Writing GUI apps on using base OS interfaces on anything was a nightmare. Still is. What made it nicer was having IDEs with GUI designers. Smalltalk existed, but it was a world unto itself and was not meant to write native-looking applications.
- igouy 2y ago
  > Smalltalk existed, but it was a world unto itself and was not meant to write native-looking applications. Huh? There have been Smalltalk language implementations based on MS Win controls (as-if they were MS VB programs). http://www.object-arts.com/dolphin7.html http://www.object-arts.com/dolphin7.html Also Digitalk Smalltalk for MS Win and OS/2. Also IBM Smalltalk. ~ There have been Smalltalk language implementations that emulated native widget Look & Feel (various MS Win, OS/2, Motif/CDE, MacOS). Obviously putting a lot of effort into providing "native-looking" applications. Common-place to copy a Smalltalk app from a Mac to a MS Win PC and switch the emulation from MacOS to MSWin.

Sure but at least it shipped with an OS that had a GUI and multitasking in an era when the vast majority of personal computers had neither. Let's not forget how early this was. Any personal computer that shipped with a GUI OS at the time shipped it in a state that wasn't yet fully realized or completely documented. Everyone was still figuring out what a GUI OS should be. It wasn't until years later when Unix-based workstation OSes migrated down to consumer desktops that things started stabilizing. Before that we were pioneers roughing it on the frontier. I had an Amiga 1000 and did hobby programming on it starting in 85. At the time everything friends and I wrote only used the OS to open a custom screen because all the fun was experimenting with graphics. Most of the apps for the first couple years either used the CLI or just put up a window with a few drop downs and otherwise rendered their own UX inside it.

amichail 2y ago
I think I would have been better off with a PC, Turbo Pascal, and no GUI programming to distract me from more interesting hobby coding.
rbanffy 2y ago
> Any personal computer that shipped with a GUI OS at the time shipped it in a state that wasn't yet fully realized or completely documented You are forgetting Apple. By the time the Amiga was introduced it was pointing the way GUIs were going for the next decade. The one thing it didn’t have was multitasking, which came in 87 with Multifinder. The Amiga was more powerful and I wish it had an OS based on Coherent, which was scheduled for the CBM 900, rather than what ended up being AmigaOS.

rbanffy 2y ago

Writing GUI apps on using base OS interfaces on anything was a nightmare. Still is. What made it nicer was having IDEs with GUI designers. Smalltalk existed, but it was a world unto itself and was not meant to write native-looking applications.

igouy 2y ago
> Smalltalk existed, but it was a world unto itself and was not meant to write native-looking applications. Huh? There have been Smalltalk language implementations based on MS Win controls (as-if they were MS VB programs). http://www.object-arts.com/dolphin7.html http://www.object-arts.com/dolphin7.html Also Digitalk Smalltalk for MS Win and OS/2. Also IBM Smalltalk. ~ There have been Smalltalk language implementations that emulated native widget Look & Feel (various MS Win, OS/2, Motif/CDE, MacOS). Obviously putting a lot of effort into providing "native-looking" applications. Common-place to copy a Smalltalk app from a Mac to a MS Win PC and switch the emulation from MacOS to MSWin.