Saber Software (Sabe

[Glen Dudek]

dcall at amadeus.la.tek.com (Dale Call) writes:
>Does someone out there have a phone number and address for Saber Software
>of Cambridge, Mass.?

Saber Software can be reached at:

    Saber Software, Inc.
    30 JFK Street
    Cambridge, MA 02138
    617 876-7636

Disclaimer: I am friends with the folks who developed Saber - I will try
to be objective but I urge you to evaluate it yourself.

I think it is a great software development system.  It nicely integrates
the edit<->compile<->debug steps, using your usual editor of course.  It
has a good windowing interface for Suntools and/or X.  It can handle very
large applications.  It is ANSI-C compatible.  It has a combined dbx-style
and 'C'-expression command interface.  Saber supports per-workstation or
floating licenses.  It has a *complete* interpreter.

Now, I know what you're thinking, but don't be put off by the interpreter.
It will load object code as well as source, and it loads code faster than
the compiler can compile.  Execution of source can be slow, but it is the
price you pay for the extra error checking.  The extra error checking is
worth it - it can find the nastiest bugs in minutes instead of days (e.g.,
stomping on pointers, using freed memory, walking off the end of static or
dynamically allocated data structures, etc.).  It is a giant step beyond
lint - programmers at MIT who want to qualify the level of debugging that
source code has passed use the term 'saberized' for the highest level.
Saber even found a latent bug in 'cat' (variable used before set)!

I witnessed one of the most graphic (sorry :-) demonstrations of the power
of Saber was in the earlier stages of Saber's development.  One of the
developers wanted to learn about programming X applications, so he simply
loaded the X object library Xlib.a into the interpreter.  He then made
interactive calls to routines in Xlib to create, map, and manipulate a
window, in seconds.  Compare this with writing a 'C' prototype program to
experiment with X, with an edit-compile-link cycle between attempts.

I was at an X toolkit tutorial at the first MIT X conference, and the
creators of the X toolkit praised Saber highly.  Saber Software offers (or
at least offered) a free evaluation.  Try it!

	Glen Dudek
	dudek at ksr.com