March 93 - Editor's Note
Editor's Note
Mary Elaine Califf
Welcome to the conference issue. We've tried this month to gather articles from
several of the conference presenters in order to give those who couldn't get to San
Diego more information than can be conveyed in a conference report, and to give those
who did go some hard copies with perhaps some additional detail.
Not from the conference
We do have several items not conference-related. Besides the usual association news,
Steve Mann provides reports on the San Francisco MacWorld Expo and the Microsoft
Windows™ Programming Conference for Macintosh Developers. Jeff Alger and Eric
Berdahl are at it again, this time on the subject of code reuse.
Introduction To . . .
If you get the feeling that this issue has a lot of articles that are introductions to
something, you're getting a good feel for this year's conference. In this issue we have
introductions two object-oriented languages: Dylan and Beta; a new development
environment, Camelot, that uses a third language, Fire; a methodology for analysis and
design; a library for front-ending mainframe applications; a tool for analysis and
design; and a direct broadcast satellite system which will use OOP.
Unfortunately, some of the most important topics of the conference are missing. The
Bedrock team was there and gave more information than they have in the past, though
not enough to satisfy most of their listeners. Taligent also put in an appearance. They
didn't say much, but left a more satisfied audience, probably because of lower
expectations. For details of the presentations, see the conference report.
To many, the most important event of the conference came in a comment from the back
of the room when Apple promised a bug-fixing release of MacApp 3 as soon as possible.
As soon as possible has not, of course, been defined, but the promise itself is a new and
encouraging development for those of us still plugging away with MacApp.
The response to MADA feedback was in general an encouraging feature of the
conference. Several vendors at least claimed to be changing priorities to more quickly
incorporate missing that audience feedback indicated were important.
Upcoming Issues
In following issues we look forward to reviews of NeoAccess, POET, ObjectMaster,
InsideOut, and Component Workshop, as well as technical articles on Prograph, MCL,
Dylan, Bedrock, and, of course, MacApp. The May issue will include the second half of
Jeff Alger and Neal Goldstein's article on SBM as well as a second article on BETA. We
will also be introducing you to VDL Companion™, a currently beta CASE tool from SBM
International.