Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!sumax!polari!rwing!seaeast!burklabs!ronb
From: ronb@burklabs (Ron Burk       )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ comparison
Message-ID: <06RXo1w161w@burklabs>
Date: 3 Sep 90 19:04:32 GMT
References: <1990Aug29.161622.12404@persoft.com>
Organization: Burk Labs, Kirkland WA
Lines: 38

eda@persoft.com (Ed Almasy) writes:

> In article <1990Aug24.181159.19680@cs.columbia.edu> kearns@cs.columbia.edu (S
> >
> 
> >	* Zortech is commended for providing a lengthy list of the bugs in
> >the product.  However, these bugs should be fixed BEFORE adding extra
> >features to the integrated system.  It is scary when a company prefers
> >to jazz up an interface before making the basic compiler correct.
> 
> It would seem to me that this comment would be more applicable to
> Borland than to Zortech.
> 
> I would also like to note that:
> 
> 1) The bug list was far from "lengthy", and many of the "bugs" were
> actually quirks in the way the Zortech compiler behaved versus the way
> CFRONT behaves.
> 
> 2) At least Zortech is willing to admit to problems with their product
> (unlike a couple of other companies who seem to do their level best to
> ignore them until they're forced into admission). 
> 

Actually, the bug list that they publish has always been a small subset of
the number of reported and documented bugs.  I haven't had enough time with
the latest release to tell, but certainly the real bug list for all previous
releases always qualified as "lengthy".  I don't think this is a symptom of
dishonesty, just lack of organization and attention to detail.

An important drawback of Zortech which I haven't seen mentioned is that ZTC
misses significant error checks that TCC catches.  For example, ZTC often
does not detect that a function that should return a value does not.  It
also does not detect unused variables or function parameters by default.

I agree with an opinion I saw earlier:  they both have drawbacks and if
you're a serious PC C++ developer, you'll want to make sure your code works
with both of them.