In a controversial poll published on AmigaWorld.net a week ago, it was determined that a staggering 60% think that AmigaOS software lacks in quality, one way or another. In this Special AmigaWorld.net Sunday Poll, you are kindly asked to pinpoint the single most important factor to raise the AmigaOS Style Guide conformity of newly developed AmigaOS software, and how to dramatically raise the quality of AmigaOS software written in 2012.

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@Petah

Quote:

... a staggering 60% think that AmigaOS software lacks in quality...

What is meant by 'quality'? It can have different meanings, be applied to different aspects.

The way you ask it here sounds a bit 'hollow'.

Is it the interaction with the user (GUI) that lets s/w down? Is it the documentation? It's speed of execution (or more probably the lack thereof...)? It's usefullness? The texts used (spelling, grammar, etc.)? The 'weight' of the s/w?

Bear in mind that in this niche there are quite some people dabbling in coding, but not actually know what they are doing. There are some people who are brilliant designers but a bit less so in (structured) coding and there are perfect coders who happen to be less gifted in designing. And all variations in between.

Also bear in mind that official documentation (SDK AutoDocs) is being worked on and brought up to date. Sometimes documentation is hard to grasp, unless you know what it is about and then you realise you hardly need that documentation anylonger...

Also, when someone releases s/w on say, OS4Depot, don't leave her/him out in the cold, but actively comment on it! And be specific about your findings and what you miss and what you like/dislike. Comments like "Great!" in twentyfold does not cut the cake (or a more negative single word comment). Why do you find it "Great!" would be more helpfull.

You all can help and contribute by translating the catalogs. There's only a handfull of programs that show a healthy set of catalogs. This enhances quality considerably.

Have you found a way to overcome a common issue? Publish it! Make a tutorial of it and get it out to the public. Believe me: it'll be devoured!

Thanks for bringing up the issue!

OldFart

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@Petah

If it is fast and has the look and feel of Amiga-software,
then it has already the best quality's.

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@Petah

I don't think quality is the issue. The real issue is quantity. We need more people who are willing to take a chance playing with and getting to know how to make useful Amiga programs whether it be using GCC, Hollywood, PortablE, or whatever language they wish.
Suggesting that everyone needs to conform to a particular standard and language will only cause people who might otherwise have considered trying to attempt some programming to shy away and not even try. That is exactly what we don't want, in my opinion.
I'd rather see lots of programs with a few that are well written then only a handful of well written ones with nothing else new coming out.
Come on people, take a chance and learn a new language! Its fun!

Scott

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@Petah

I have seen many useful programs in Hollywood, I know some don't like Hollywood, its a way better option then using AMOS that does not confirm to system friendly development, XAMOS exists but is not use full in its current form too many things missing.

If you really wont to make Amiga programs then C is the choice, because it does makes possible to take advantageous every API / Library / Device that AmigaOS has, not like many other languages that try to simplify or create commands only known to that language.

To create good software you need lots and lots of time and motivation to do so, you also need know what your making, good project planing, if your working in a team, will need make shore that every code you submit to a depository is unit tested, so that other developers do not need spend there time debugging your code, if your working alone, user feedback is really important, some time you forget to check some thing, or did not think some will fail, and some user does some thing you did not expect that result in bugs you did not know about is found, is is also a good idea to learn to use gdb, it should make it a lot quicker to find most crashes, Grim reaper does point you to function some thing bad happened but does not tell you what line, gdb does that, gdb can also print out variables, you can also put in break points and step in to the code.

I also suggest when you making a program start small, whit a few tests, change it in to object and let the linker take care of the reset. Not writing every thing in one big chunk of code make your project more organized, easier to find what your looking for, also only smaller parts of your program has be recompiled if you did it correct, that saves time on bigger projects.

If there is parts in project that has to be optimized and its not system friendly, then I suggest you kindly move it in to a plugin, so it can be replaced on system that do not have that hardware.

Assembler is cool but know where to use it, 680x0 assembler is different from PowerPC, ARM, x86 so this is CPU dependent code, if wont your code portable, it makes sense to use as little as possible, it should be used to optimize tight loops, and time critical parts, on slow systems important, on faster systems not so important.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

AMOS that does not confirm to system friendly development,

You can use it to open windows but it is work and not worth it. Still AMOS was OS friendly to an extent as it used the graphics.library AFAIK but it had a funny way of locking itself to the system. But I'm surprised people would still use it. Fine for games though.

Quote:

If you really wont to make Amiga programs then C is the choice, because it does makes possible to take advantageous every API / Library / Device that AmigaOS has, not like many other languages that try to simplify or create commands only known to that language.

I don't really think so, most languages I came across used the Amiga APIs, including assembler. For example you open any library, device or other Amiga API perfectly fine in AmigaE. It also was optimised for Amiga with builr in functions.

The language used isnt an issue. If a person wants to write a certain type of software, they'll use what theyre most comfortable with, which will produce the best results.

Even AMOS is capable of some decent software. It's not like people are using stock 1meg/68000 machines anymore. It's also capable of being completely system friendly if a person puts in the time to learn it (although it wouldnt be my personal 1st choice it is possible).

The bigger "problem" is simply a lack of developers with the time and inclination to make quality software. It's not something that writes itself overnight, and the lack of money in the amiga scene makes it hard for groups of people to spend the sorts of time they used to spend (probably 90% of the best amiga software is still commerical 68k stuff, with probably 8% being the best of the open source world, and a few percent original, amiga osftware (figures picked out of thin air, but hopefully y'all get the idea).

Another big problem is the lack of co-operation between people when it comes to writing original software. I personally dont subscribe to the much repeated idea that there needs to be more co-operation between camps for "amiga" to prosper. For the most part there's about as much co-operation as reasonably possible, but the one area that lacks in terms of people working together is on new, "amiga" (os3.x/os4.x/aros/mos) software. Big, commercial quality software takes time, and more than 1 person.

@Petah
I think we could improve the quality of AmigaOS software by having Petah contribute to a program project by helping with documentation or translation instead of focusing on these useless polls. That being said, people have every right to expect commercial software to be of the highest possible quality but when it's free "don't look a gift horse in the mouth".

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I wonder how much of the problem is that users believe all software should be free in our type of community and most developers therefore only do this as a hobby when they have the time as they know they cannot devote full time to the project. I am all for free software and I also am happy to pay a fair price for pro software that conforms.

However, Api supporting software has been called for since OS2 and still people do it there way then wonder why it will not work on later OS's.

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@clusteruk

Quote:

clusteruk wrote: I wonder how much of the problem is that users believe all software should be free in our type of community and most developers therefore only do this as a hobby when they have the time as they know they cannot devote full time to the project. I am all for free software and I also am happy to pay a fair price for pro software that conforms.

I don't think that's the problem. It's more that the community is so small, that nobody is willing to put the time in to create something that is worth selling - as they don't think they will make any money out of it.

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@scabit

Quote:

scabit wrote: @Petah I don't think quality is the issue. The real issue is quantity. We need more people who are willing to take a chance playing with and getting to know how to make useful Amiga programs whether it be using GCC, Hollywood, PortablE, or whatever language they wish.

Agreed. There are good applications written in AMOS, and bad applications written in C. The language used is mostly irrelevant, although some make it harder to use the Amiga APIs.

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An appstore like thingy like djrikki's Jack seems like a good place to start.

As I wrote somewhere else, making software simple to buy, a one stop store for software makes it easier to get people to pay.

Aminet is nice for software, but it doesnt have the big fat BUY button like on Apple store.

@clusteruk

The price of software, or what people expect to pay in no way, shape, or form influences the quality of software. With the quality of free software around these days people might think twice before shelling out for software of a lower quality, but this still doesnt change the fact that there's very little good new software for any of the amiga formats that hasnt comes from the open source world.
There might be an exception or 2, but I cant think of a single piece of original "amiga" software that rivals what was available to 68k amigas 10-20 years ago. This has nothing to do with pricing. If someone produced software worth buying, people would buy it. Even Hollywood, probably the biggest current amiga app doesnt reach the standards set by other similar tools from more than a decade ago (not to belittle Hollywood, just an example of the lack of commercial quality software avilable these days). What we have these days is dozens of people working alone on dozens of small, sometimes ok-ish bits of software, but pretty much nothing that goes beyond that. As I alluded to before, this isnt the way to produce software that people are willing to pay for when there's similar, or better tools for free. Commercial quality software needs to offer incentive for a person to buy it over a free tool.

@Petah

I voted "other". Here is my dilemma:

When I write software for OpenGL, it's not worthwhile to go out of my way to support AmigaOS 4.x. I'll just write it for Mac, Windows and Linux and use SDL to reach any other platforms from there.

When I write software for the Amiga, you better believe that I'm going to have fun banging the AGA chipset because I'm not going to make any money off of it anyway.

The only compromise between the two positions is to improve AGA support in the device drivers or OS so that all of the Copper-list functionality could be abstracted away by a shared library that will translate the Amiga functions to the equivalent graphics card functions. In this way, I can use a high-level language like PortablE or C or some other high-level language to support all Amiga hardware.

I don't see this happening any time soon, however. The chances for teamwork on such a project are slim. I've got a few ideas for patching the MrgCop() function in Graphics.library to make it a little bit smarter about things on AmigaOS 3.x.

Or better still, to incorporate some updated MrgCop-style functionality into AROS 68k and just put the shared-library into all versions of AROS so some game-engine style support will come standard on all AROS machines for doing SOTB-style games and other tile-scrollers.