[MacPerl] The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly :-)

[Mark Manning <markem@flash.net>]

Well, I just got back from SIGGRAPH'98 and here's the poop:

1. Apple never showed it's face at SIGGRAPH.  IBM was there.  Lots of
Unix boxes were there, Dell, Compaq, HP, and others were there.  But no
Apple.  Lots of people selling software for Macs - but no Apple.  So I
mentioned MacPerl to the people at MetaCreations, StrataVision, VTK, and
others.  Mostly got "What's that?" back.

2. My Powerbook 165c's battery died the second day there - had to order
a new one.

3. My favorite cat (at home) had to go into the Vet's on Monday. 
Thought it was heart problems - turned out to be lung problems.  Didn't
sleep well that night.

4. Got food poisoning on Tuesday.

5. Our plane back was canceled and so we were herded onto another plane
four hours later.

On with MacPerl specific things:

1. I tried to install the latest version from the MacPerl CD onto my
Powerbook 165c.  Even got out the MacPerl book.  No go.  Paul - have you
had any problems installing it on your system?  Luckily, I already had
v5.13rX from a previous installation and that was enough to see me
through.

2. Kudos to Matthias on MacPerl!  :-)  I'm translating a program from
Pascal to MacPerl (thus the taking of my Powerbook to SIGGRAPH).  The
overall program has shrunk from being 400 subroutines at about 8K each
to 400 subroutines at only about 3K each.  MacPerl really does make text
based things smaller, easier to read, and easier to program!  :-)

But then - anyone who's programmed in MacPerl at all already knows
this.  :-)  It's just that I was being amazed all over again.  :-)

Back to SIGGRAPH:

It's become much more commericalized than even last year.  Classes which
were supposed to deal with things like "Intro to Computer Graphics"
really was just a flimsy cover for retailers to push their products.

For the cost - it was ok - but almost not worth it to go.

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