NeXT vs Sun
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as the canonical example of rapid application development and object-oriented tooling productivity, though many note it is biased marketing.
What it is
A 1991 NeXT promotional video that stages a head-to-head programming contest between a NeXT computer and a Sun workstation. It shows NeXT's interface builder and object-oriented tooling producing an application far faster than traditional UNIX development.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2015 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends indymike · 2017-03 · on “Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)”
Started programming in 1982. Object oriented programming was a huge advance - especially in developer productivity. A side effect was the dramatic improvement in developer tools: gui builders, IDEs, etc all improved dramatically. Probably the watershed moment for OO was this NeXT video that showed the difference: [this video]
Recommends rileyphone · 2022-11 · on “SwiftUI Is Convenient, but Slow”
There's a fun bit of marketing [0] NeXT did when AppKit was the new thing, comparing building a reasonably non-trivial application with it to a Sun workstation using C. Obviously biased, but still an interesting look into the development environment that among other things brought us the Web and DOOM. 0. [this video]
Recommends lproven · 2024-10 · on “Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)”
So very much this. I think programming languages are also long overdue for some controlled trials. They can't be blinded: any experimental subject bright enough to learn to program is probably going to know what language they are programming in. But trials comparing the effectiveness of different languages. How long they take to attain a specified level of proficiency, how long to learn enough to produce working code, and importantly, readability: for instance, how long it takes to find intentionally-planted bugs in existing, unfamiliar code. NeXT did this, way back in the 1980s, and Sun lost badly: [this video] There is a writeup of some of it here: [LINK] But speaking as a non-video-liker, this
Cites frik · 2015-04 · on “BeOS Demo Video (1998) [video]”
BeOS was great, but compare Steve Jobs' NeXT presentation (1992) to the BeOS video: [LINK] NeXTSTEP is the predecessor of OS X, the rest is history. BeOS filesystem "BeFS" had extended attributes (metadata) with indexing and querying features similar to a relational database and Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips". Though Microsoft failed to complete Cairo-OS as well as WinFS. The BeFS main developer wrote a book about it, as it is out of print now he released it as PDF for free: [LINK] , [LINK] Check out HaikuOS, an open source BeOS reimplementation: [LINK] . And there were two BeOS inspired OS: ZETA-OS and SkyOS with some shady history: [LINK] , [LINK] Some of the BeOS v
Cites pjmlp · 2016-09 · on “An experience with Ubuntu Touch development”
Another good example is the NeXT vs Sun duel, regarding the RAD tooling of NeXTStep vs the traditional UNIX development (1991). [this video]
Cites pjmlp · 2016-09 · on “An experience with Ubuntu Touch development”
You mean like this in 1991? [this video] I would have rather used the GUI tooling of a NeXT, which eschews the UNIX traditions even though it builds partially on top of them, than the Solaris way of programming GUIs, if given the option. Just because I could only access green phosphor terminals, doesn't mean I wasn't aware of other, more expensive, options.
Cites pjmlp · 2017-03 · on “Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms”
> which is further evidence of the amazing foresight Apple had in basing macOS on an open-source core (BSD): NeXT did it, not Apple. And the goal of the time was just to help bring UNIX software into NeXTSTEP as they were competing against the likes of Solaris for market share. [this video] The whole NeXT architecture has very little UNIX on it. [LINK] [LINK]
Cites pjmlp · 2017-03 · on “Building a Command-Line Application with Crystal”
If you enjoy reading documents, BITSAVERS.ORG is a treasure mine full of lost knowledge. [LINK] Here you will find Xerox PARC, DEC, Burroughs, Apple, Sun, Borland,... old research documents, papers, manuals. In the context of static compilation, for example in MS-DOS, take Turbo Pascal 6.0 programmer's guide. [LINK] For some 8 bit love you can check ZX Spectrum and Atari archives. [LINK] [LINK] Next step is to get an emulator for any of those old OS/computers and try to follow along one of those books. Also there are some videos on YouTube showing those systems. "The Smalltalk-80 Programming System" [LINK] "NeXT vs Sun" [this video] "Steve Jobs internal demo of NeXTSTEP 3" [LINK] "Amiga Programmi