jruark56 wrote:MikeFulton,
I am not answering for the OP, but when I am learning a new system i lke to start with simple stuff and graduate to more complex. My first stab at programming on the ST via emulation was a simple text based program with input via keyboard. No GEM, no windows, no alert boxes. Just simple text.
Could be a valid approach.
Well, I wouldn't exactly say it's an invalid approach, but perhaps an outdated one.
In 1985, when the ST first came out, most of the people programming it hadn't done much, if anything, with MSDOS or UNIX systems, or other more sophisticated systems. They were generally more familiar with the previous generation of 8-bit machines, which didn't really have operating systems as such. Generally, the older 8-bit machines had a relatively simple ROM kernel that provided I/O functions and some basic utility functions for things like setting up a display screen. As a result, when you jumped into the ST and started poking around, the most familiar things you'd see would be the BIOS and GEMDOS functions for doing basic I/O stuff. So it made sense that the first programs you'd write would be relatively simple things that used those functions.
But now? Even if you're new to the ST, I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. Especially if you have any sort of programming experience with any modern systems.
Turn things on their head... if you were sitting down to learn how to program Windows, would you start out by playing with BIOS text output functions? It's hard to imagine someone taking such an approach.
GEM is really not very complex, as GUI environments go. The hardest thing about it is the fact that you don't have application frameworks to manage the low-level aspects of the event handling process, as you would with Windows or other modern systems. But if that's your ultimate target anyway, you might as well starting aiming at it right from the start.
That's my 2 cents worth.