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From: dank@eng.umd.edu (Daniel R. Kuespert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: Turbo C or MSC
Message-ID: <1990Mar26.174313.1976@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 26 Mar 90 17:43:13 GMT
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In article <1990Mar26.154024.11739@dasys1.uucp> mberger1%tasha@graf.poly.edu
 (Micha Berger at Polytechnic U.) writes:
>On the other hand, QuickC has features, more geared toward professional
>programmers. (For example there is not only a graphics library, but a second,
>business graphics library.) It also have special niceties for system
>programmers. It allows you to declare a function to be a driver for a given
>interrupt, the debugger and integrated system are for both C and MASM, the
>inline code is full MASM.
...
>Each claim that they produce faster code. For the same benchmarks. I don't
>know how. Comments?
...
>I also underplayed TurboC's advantages. But is my basic categorization (but
>TurboC for the home, QuickC for work - business or system programming)
>correct?

Doesn't sound like the Quick C I know and hate.  I've never played with
QC graphics, but Borland's BGI system is miles ahead of the crude
MSC library.  (It also has business-type graphics like bars and pies.)
Both Quick C and Turbo C's integrated debuggers are toys,
more suitable for home use; with the Turbo C Professional package you get
Turbo Debugger, which is a considerable improvement on the Turbo C
integrated debugger and makes CodeView look like DEBUG.  All in all,
I'd reverse the categorizations you've applied to the two products.

"Who has the fastest code" is difficult to measure because companies sometimes
customize their compilers to win benchmarking contests.  Speed on a benchmark
does not necessarily translate to speed on _your_ application.
Both Quick C and Turbo C are credible compilers, although Turbo C would
most likely edge out Quick C (there's a PC Tech Journal article comparing
the two as well as several commercial compilers--Jan or Feb '88, I think).
For fast code and really good optimization, MSC is the way to go.
Unless you're doing really loop-intensive types of code, though, it 
may not be worth coping with all the command-line switches and 
byzantine error messages MSC spews out, though.

dan

Daniel R. Kuespert
Chemical Process Systems Laboratory
University of Maryland, College Park
dank@eng.umd.edu