Benchmark

Back around 1990 or so, I wrote the Benchmark program for performance flight test analysis. It was, and remains, the only program of its type in the world. I wrote it in a fit of passion, and it was my first effort at programming. I've always maintained that the first law of Macintosh programming is that whatever you're proud of now will embarrass you in a month. While Benchmark worked fine, and has worked reliably for many years, the user interface was attrocious. I never knew how to go about making it a 'real' program.

Matt Emerson approached me about moving Benchmark to Apple's Cocoa programming environment, and for the last year or so, we have been working on this. Matt has done all of the programming on this version.

Our plan is to do the final work on Benchmark in open beta testing. That is, we will make a version of the software available. It is a fully functional version that only has a few limitations: it expires every month so you will need to get a new version, and it will print "Prerelease" on all printed charts.

Let's take a quick tour of Benchmark.