[Coco] Drive Wire strangeness

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 11:03 PM, Steve Ostrom <smostrom7 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Programs that are written in OS-9 for the Coco, could they have been written
> easier in assembly or BASIC?  Were they written in OS-9 for portability
> only, or because the programmer could do things in OS-9 that they could not
> in assembly or BASIC?  I realize that BASIC is slow, and is an interpreted
> language.  Assembly is native and blazingly fast.  What are the advantages
> in writing software in OS-9, besides portability to other systems that also
> run OS-9?

There are two advantages to writing software for OS9 that I see:

1 - Your software works under the OS9 operating system.  This brings a
world of advantages to the user and to your program.  OS9's universal
I/O and piping mean that your program can accept output from any other
OS9 program and generate input for any other OS9 program (ala
Unix/Linux).  Your program is not an island, it becomes a tool that
can be an integrated part of a very powerful toolset.

2 - Your software has access to OS9's built in system calls.  You can
think of these as similar to using the ROM routines from BASIC, but
much more powerful.  No need to write yet another routine for X.  You
also gain benefits when dealing with all different types of
hardware... basically you don't have to!  You write software that uses
the standard I/O interface and let OS9 worry about specifics.