Revolution is the ONLY environment that is closest to the promise of 'write once, run anywhere'.
John, et al:
For history's sake, let me point out that there actually once was a "write once run anywhere environment": the UCSD-p operating system & UCSD PASCAL. It ran on a wide range of computers from Dec minicomputers to Radio Shack TRS-80s in the 1970s.
Like RR, it was a runtime (ie: interpreted) environment; unlike RR it included its own O/S (which eliminates many cross-platform issues such as different sizes of text). Like RR it included a (reasonably good for the time) debugger and the ability to resolve routine libraries at runtime (ie: 'start using" in Transcript syntax).
Several days ago someone suggested there might be a slight performance hit running a RunRev stack created on a Mac on a Windows box because the Intel and Motorola CPU chips read each word in reverse order. In 1986 I spent two frantic weeks trying to find the cause of a dramatic (40-60%) performance degredation of our corporate computer (a multi-user Motorola 68xxx CPU). It turned out that the last O/S upgrade sent me had been created for an Intel 808x! Everything worked just fine; but the operating system was wasting an enormous amount of time reversing the byte sex of every word it read.
Watching UCSD-p System lose out to MS/DOS when the IBM PCs originally were introduced, I learned first hand that a technically and functionally superior product can fail
a. when competing against an inferior product backed by big advertising $, or
b. when corporate management doesn't understand the product or the market.
In this case Microsoft offered MS/DOS for $40 while Softech Microsystems charged over $400 for the IBM PC implementation of the p-System.
In my book of computer history, Softech's IBM PC pricing strategy and Apple Executives' inability to "get" what HyperCard was all about rank right up there with Xerox's unappreciation of the PARC GUI.
Rob Cozens, CCW
"Where but America can the person who lost the popular vote become President without a coup?"
