Dec 96 Viewpoint
Volume Number: 12
Issue Number: 12
Column Tag: Viewpoint
By Eric Gundrum
The Past
By the time you read this, you probably are just about to or already have stuffed
yourself with turkey (or a reasonable vegetarian alternative) and are preparing for
the holiday season. The new year is just around the corner and with it, the opportunity
for change.
MacTech has recently undergone some changes, and one of the results is my
beginning as Editor-in-Chief. In the last several months, many people at MacTech have
made a number of beneficial changes in how we build the magazine, making my job a
whole lot easier. We now have Jessica Courtney as our Managing Editor, and Nick
DeMello for online support. In addition, we’ve broadened our Editorial Board to include
Carl de Cordova for Internet Technologies, and Will Iverson (formerly of MacTech and
Symantec, and now at Apple) for Java. Today, MacTech editorial is created by more
people than ever before in the magazine’s almost 13-year history.
My name has been on the MacTech masthead for some time now. I’ve been working
in the background, helping where I could. Some of you may also know me from my work
at MacHack. Others may recognize me from my SmartFriends affiliations, and others
might remember me from my days working on MicroPhone at the now defunct Software
Ventures. I am a professional programmer. I’ve been working in the Macintosh
industry for seven years now; wow, has it changed.
The Future
For as long as there have been personal computers I have enjoyed programming
them. I still have a bookshelf full of MacTutor (the old name for MacTech), complete
with the Table of Contents on the cover. Since that time the magazine has served Mac OS
programmers, professional and hobbyist alike. Nonetheless, our industry has grown
up a bit, and MacTech with it. (Now we put the Table of Contents inside like other
magazines.)
Since taking this position, I’ve spoken with many colleagues about what changes
they want to see in the magazine. Their responses were just as varied as the people I
asked. Some want more in-depth, technical articles, and some want more about getting
started with programming. Many people asked for more articles in the middle -
articles that provide a bridge from starting out as a programmer, to the more
sophisticated problems of deciphering the runtime model of a fat SCSI driver used for
disk compression. I plan to satisfy all of these requests in the coming months, but most
of all, I want to increase the quality of the articles.
We have many exciting issues planned for the next year. From a look at the BeOS
to new views of programming Macintosh without C++. We’ve got “goodies” coming
your way - for example, the DR8 release of the BeOS for Power Macintosh will be
included on CD in the January issue. For the C++ geeks, we will offer a number of
ideas for getting more from the beast before it gets you. You can expect to see more
reviews of programming tools to let you know what gets the job done. There will also
be some code showing you how to get the job done. We will continue to bring you
articles demonstrating tricks of the trade, and of course, we will bring you some more
code. As the Mac moves forward with new technologies, we will show you the code that
lets you use those technologies now. If we can find other interesting things to do with
code, we will show you that too.
As you can see, we are planning to show you the code. Nothing documents a
program as well as well written code. You can rest assured that there will be plenty of
articles to inform and entertain you. There may not be any more pages of code than
before, but we will give you the snippets that count; the ones you will continue to refer
back to. You can expect more cool programming projects, and more cool technologies,
and, of course, more cool code.
We want to show you interesting things people are programming the Mac to do,
and give you ideas about what you can do. Do you have an idea you want to share? Drop a
note to editorial@mactech.com. Want to get up on your soapbox, write us at
letters@mactech.com. And, if you want share a tidbit, send a tip to tips@mactech.com.
The Present
In this issue you will want to check out our comprehensive review of the
CodeWarrior and Symantec development environments. Both tools have their strengths
and their weaknesses. Read the article to choose which is best for you.
Ed Ringel offers a low cost approach to meeting the information management
needs of your latest project. If you want a quick and easy way to store a lot of data, be
sure to read “A Tightwad’s Guide to Flat File Databases.”
In another feature article, Andy Dent shows how to modify AppMaker 2.0 to
generate code for custom objects in “Customizing AppMaker 2.0.” This is a must-read
for everyone looking for faster ways to build graphical interfaces. Best of all,
AppMaker writes the C++ so you don’t have to.
Furthermore, the magazine would not be complete without the interesting items
from our regular contributors. Flip through the pages to find all that is there.