>At a list price of $360 US. The Codewarrior compiler and development
>suite does NOT achieve a good value/dollar ratio. Under Windows the
>IDE is buggy, the compiler is unreliable, and the port looks like a
>Mac application. If I wanted to use a Mac application, then I would
>get a Mac.
what i wanted to point out was that Aaron's statement left out a lot of
information. i agree that CW is buggy. the bugs are irritations, but not
blocking issues. i have never had a problem with the compiler, it has been
100% reliable for me. it does look and feel like a Mac, and that sucks but
does not detract from its capabilities, only from its UI. it's quite
usable, it's just not what you'd expect from a Win32 app (that might be an
understatement). the only significant problems i've heard of that had no
workarounds were ones having to do with Constructor (which sucks many times
over and therefore i use PilRC and post-link the resources directly into my
app) and the PalmRez post-linker (which has never given me any problems
because i don't give it any resources to compile!).
my app is currently 74kb (including resources) for the release builds, and
112kb (including resources) for the debug builds. you simply can't do that
with GCC. so for me, the $360 is an incredible deal because it means i can
actually write my app.
there were exactly 3 things that made the $360 worth it for me -- and until
those three things bit me, i was perfectly happy with GCC. i believe it is
an excellent set of tools with which to start programming the Palm devices,
and for many people they may never need anything more. i do think it's
...interesting... to develop commercial software using a free compiler.
the 3 things that made CW worth it for me are:
- it handles multi-segment apps so i can build >64kb apps
- the debugger works and is pretty good (better than gdb)
- NewFloatMgr support
>Forgive me for being blunt, but your statement is no more objective than
>the one that prompted it. Nor is mine. How can an individual be perfectly
>objective anyway? I have used many development environments, and few
>have been as "flakey" (hows that for a subjective term?) as the
>Codewarrior implementation for Palm OS.
the original statement claimed that everything that CW can do, GCC can do.
and that's simply not true. that's what i was responding to. yes, i'm
sharing my subjective experiences as well. but the main thrust of my
original mail was that GCC in fact cannot do everything that CW can do (or
at least that's what i meant for it to be...).
>It is indeed silly to say that compilers should be free. It is also
>unnecessary to accept anything but near perfection from a compiler
>and development tool chain. These tools are the first link in a long
>chain that leads to a good product.
well, yes. but between CW and GCC, in my experience CW is nearer to
perfection. if money is no object and functionality is more important, then
my opinion is that CW wins. if money is an issue, then it's more or less a
no-brainer to use GCC and write tiny apps. (the really odd thing is that i
only write freeware apps for the Palm devices, and it's just a hobby to blow
off steam from my programming day job -- but it was still important enough
to me to shell out $360 for CW. go figure, i suppose).
