August 91 - Inventing the Future
Inventing the Future
Bill Anderson
The coming twelve months promise many interesting developments in the world of
object programming. We've already seen some major changes this year: Apple and IBM
have signed their widely-heralded technology alliance agreement, the Windows user
has become a key market for many former "Mac only" developers with the introduction
of Windows 3.0, and it seems that every third-party software tools developer has
plans to market some sort of object-based application framework that purports to take
the pain out of cross-platform development.
These extraordinary changes bring up the question of what MADA should be doing to
serve you, its members, in the brave new world ahead. Tony Meadow, in his
President's Letter in this issue, mentions the new Charter Committee that will soon be
studying the situation in order to recommend implementation of new services and an
expansion of MADA's scope of interest. But the committee and the Board need help from
you. That's where the 1991 MADA Survey comes in.
1991 MADA Survey
The 1991 MADA Survey was mailed with this issue of FrameWorks. The results of this
survey will help guide the Charter Committee and the Board in setting new directions
for the Association. The results of the survey should also prove quite useful to you, not
only in gauging the impact of cross-platform development now and in the coming year,
but also in answering such common questions as "What salaries are being paid to
MacApp developers?
The results of the survey will be published in the December issue of FrameWorks.
We've not offered any tee-shirts or other special offers as an incentive to get members
to complete the survey and mail it back. Rather, we hope that you'll look at the survey
as an opportunity to help the Association, while at the same time contributing to the
success and validity of the results-results that you'll want to study and use once
they're published.
Special thanks goes to
James Plamondon, Arvid Jedlicka and Don Sawtelle for their substantial input in
developing the questions in the survey. A big "tip o' the hat" also goes to Arvid for
volunteering to verify and analyze the data once it has been collected. n