Further on Platform Specificity

[Jan Schenkel]

--- Dan Shafer <revdan at danshafer.com> wrote:
> I was chatting with one of my Java buddies this
> evening about this 
> discussion and he pointed out something that is
> important to keep in 
> mind as well.
> 
> If small developers want or need to create software
> for multiple 
> platforms, it is crucial that they not be expected
> to maintain multiple 
> code bases to do so. To the extent that the toolset
> they use supports 
> OS-specific features and these features are
> incorporated, they end up 
> with a situation where they have to maintain
> multiple code bases or, in 
> the not-less-unattractive alternative, incorporate
> lots of 
> platform-checking conditional code.
> 
> This kind of thing can kill a small developer.
> 

Well, as someone who has used FoxPro in a
cross-platform manner, I can attest that it's not
always easy to accomplish and that some tools are
better than others. I've always ended up with a
mixture of platformspecific code and manual tweaks to
the layout after the migrator tools were done.
Revolution is a lot quicker and far better than the
FoxPro transporter has ever been (even after a
colleague and I hacked it into a much better tool than
delivered by the MS-boys).
But I do wish it were easier to say "this collection
of properties is platform-specific" and "the text and
htmltext properties language-specific" and have one
profile-system to handle it without having to create 8
profiles to manage 2 platforms and 4 languages.

Jan Schenkel.

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail