From: David Vallner <david@...>
Date: 2006-08-28T08:11:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Why Ruby does not nead an ide

Bill Kelly wrote:
> Apologies in advance for contributing to the [OT]ness...

Meh. The thread started with a rant, it was destined to sidetrack 
horribly. Into about three flamewars at once too - an impressive feat, that.

> Background: I've used MSDOS since PC-DOS V1.0, and also
> got heavily into Amiga starting at V1.0...
> 
> I don't think it was lack of direct access everything that
> killed the Amiga.

I didn't actually say that. Both systems were very successful gaming 
platforms, and IIRC, Amiga hardware tended to be technologically 
superior for most of the time they coexisted. Except it was also more 
expensive - I don't think Amigas properly penetrated the European market 
because of that, just like the Macintosh never did.

Especially in the later years, between 1992 - 1995, a lot of games were 
made for both platforms, and Windows 3.1 was quite popular for secretary 
work, which made the cheaper alternative easier to sell.

Surprising is however the speed with which Windows 95 took over the game 
platform scene - a scan through Home of the Underdogs shows that it won 
over by 1998, which seems a lot faster than the adoption of 2000 and XP 
over 98 was.

Speaking of them Kleenex, hand me a few. I just remembered the amazing 
cool credits you got for being the only kid in class / school that could 
edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to make Cool Game Of The Month work 
before DOS4GW came along. (Cor. I could hand-tune DOS memory usage in 
grad school. How many nerd points do you get for that again?)

David Vallner