Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: Open letter to Microsoft re: SDK and C6.0 (long)
Keywords: sdk msc6.0 compiler windows nasty horrible stuff
Message-ID: <59515@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 3 Dec 90 20:15:07 GMT
References: <5880@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 39

In article <5880@crash.cts.com> alen@crash.cts.com (Alen Shapiro) writes:
|What follows is a (mostly) unemotional report of difficulties to
|date with Microsoft C and SDK. 

I am not Microsoft, but rather a fellow user of C and the SDK, and I am
sympathetic to the bulk of your complaints.

|If Microsoft is able to read this letter from the net...so much
|the better...a point-by-point response is requested.

To the best of knowledge, there is no "Microsoft" to read and response 
to concerns expressed on notes streams -- although, if it were up to me,
there would be people so assigned.  I read notes to see what I can learn
personally, and to help out in such small ways as my limited knowledge and
power can be applied.  However, reading and replying to notes streams is
a very time consuming task, and my bosses make it clear they'd just as
soon have me doing something else.

I believe a lot of MS programmers do read these notes streams, and do take
concerns and complaints expressed to heart.  "MS" has "officially" acknowledged,
I believe, problems with their C/C++ compiler development efforts.
However, from what I seen the programmers on that effort are working
very hard, and making their very best efforts.  The "MS Development Environment"
is insanely complicated, in my opinion, which is a big part of the problem.
[external customers only see a small part of these complications, Thank
God!]

I will make my best effort to get some changes made in these areas, which
will be to post and mail your complaints to the people best positioned to
make some changes, and bend the ears of whatever managers I am privy to.
I am sorry to say that this will probably not be enough to answer the 
bulk of your complaints, but I am just another grunt in the trenches like
yourself.

Hopefully someone better positioned to answer these complaints will
respond here too.  I just felt it would be cowardly to read these
complaints and not make it clear that at least *some* action is being taken.

[A fellow C/SDK user]