Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!aries!mcdonald From: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Windows Programming Message-ID: <1990Jun13.141805.10800@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 13 Jun 90 14:18:05 GMT References: <1990Jun11.110735.13581@usenet@kadsma> <1990Jun12.010850.17716@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <22139@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <22165@boulder.Colorado.EDU> Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Reply-To: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) Organization: School of Chemical Sciences, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Lines: 24 In article nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu writes: >In other words, I agree with you. The way to sell an OS is to give away >the programming tools for it. > True. This has indeed been tried - IBM gave me and many others PS/2's (I got a Model 80) and MSC and the Windows SDK in return for getting us to write some sort of teaching program. My program has sold exactly one copy. Of course, that doesn't count the ones I gave away..... This did not really win the PS/2 (nor Windows 2.11) any great press. When people found out how much more memory cost for the PS/2's, how few cards were available for the microchannel bus, and how much more they cost .... well, I recommend Dell. It also showed that Windows programming is hard to learn. But, indeed, it has produced people who can program for Windows. I eventually came up with a genuine NEED for a genuine Windows program (the teaching one really doesn't need Windows, it was already windowed and event driven...) and was able to write it. It has become quite popular (free). So freebies can result in good - or bad - press. Doug McDonald