Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!jonka
From: jonka@microsoft.UUCP (Jonathan KAGLE)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Microsoft Support (or lack of)
Message-ID: <57328@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 11 Sep 90 18:46:13 GMT
References: <1990Aug30.222714.12127@mccc.uucp> <1990Aug31.142549.21662@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <2684@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <1990Sep6.032621.7506@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Reply-To: jonka@microsoft.UUCP (Jonathan KAGLE)
Distribution: na
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 33

In article <1990Sep6.032621.7506@rodan.acs.syr.edu> jfbruno@rodan.acs.syr.edu (John Bruno) writes:
|In article <2684@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
|>In article <1990Aug31.142549.21662@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> west@turing.toronto.edu (Tom West) writes:
|><I've bought 6.0, have found one code generation bug 
|><through pure luck and am petrified that I am going to distribute another
|><code generation bug that I haven't found in a commercial product.  
|>
|>You need a test suite for your product. If your livlihood depends on it,
|>or lives do, you must test your product thoroughly, as you are responsible
|>for it, not the tool vendors.
|
|Are you saying that Microsoft is exempt from this rule? I would think a 
|company that big would have a "test suite", right? But then again, their
|livelihood isn't at stake, since everyone will buy their products, simply
|because they're Microsoft.

On a product as complex as C 6.0, you must expect that _some_ bugs will slip
though the cracks.  You must remember that there are about a dozen megabytes
of executables, libraries, and hypertext files that ship with the C 6.0
development systems.  There is a tremendous amount of new material in the
C 6.0 package, from inline assembly to the Programmer's WorkBench.

C 6.0 is the most rigorously tested language product in Microsoft (and probably
microcomputer) history.  Microsoft Languages has a large, experienced testing
department that ran tens of thousands of hours of automated test suites on the
C 6.0 compiler and related utilities.  The high compatibility and relatively
_few_ (for a new compiler) fatal errors is testament to the quality of our
testing department.

       -Jonathan

DISCLAIMER: I don't speak for Microsoft Corporation.  Sometimes I don't even 
            speak for myself!