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From: STREATER@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (415)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS
Message-ID: <91084.233820STREATER@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 26 Mar 91 07:38:20 GMT
References: <1991Mar22.050908.28727@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
 <1991Mar24.025913.29727@amd.com>
 <1991Mar24.065427.16198@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
 <1991Mar26.011127.28302@amd.com>
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Lines: 54

In article <1991Mar26.011127.28302@amd.com>, phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
says:
>
>In article <1991Mar24.065427.16198@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
>woody@nntp-server.caltech.edu (William Edward Woody) writes:
>|       In other words, Microsoft doesn't set the standards; instead, it is
>|the market which determines the operating system standards.  And through a
>|bit of guessing and luck, you may be able to reverse-engineer the standards  d
>|and (hopefully) keep future releases of the operating system from breaking.
>
>You seem to be reading into Letwin's quote the exact opposite of what I
>got out of it, unless you're the OS vendor (like Digital Research).
>MS is saying that if your application does something undocumented
>and it is popular enough in the market, MS will bend over backwards
>to support you.
>
>If you stick to the specs, then none of this is a problem.
>
>You don't have to "reverse-engineer the standards" unless you're writing
>your own DOS.
>

Well, obviously MS *is* writing its own DOS (or Windows 3.0 in this case). So
they are the ones who have to figure out how someone's "clever" use of some
wrinkle in the system is supposed to work. Ever tried to figure out even 500
lines of spagetti code? Because sure as Murphy rules, some klod will manage to
write the 500 "clever" lines in some wildly successful Win3.0 application, then
leave or fall under a bus, leaving behind no doccy or comments.


>|       Now tell me which philosophy is going to create a more robust system
>|in the long run?
>
>As long as it works, I don't care what the philosophy behind it is.  It
>may be ugly to you, but it's the results that count and I think my PC
>with Win3 works fine. MS is promising to me that if my application is
>used by enough people, they'll keep supporting it even if the app does
>some unclean things.  I think I like that better than not being
>supported.

This I find to be a rather frightening attitude, albeit an unsurprising one.
This is the attitude for which we have to thank IBM for OS/360, MVS, and CMS.
Sure it gets the job done, but a bigger pile of junk (in all three cases) I
have yet to see. None of these systems will ever get below a certain level of
bugginess, simply because they are too large, unwieldy, and over-extended.

MS has a historic opportunity here, to prevent history being repeated.
Otherwise they will find themselves running into the quicksands, like the
dinosaurs of old.

I think that was what Woody was trying to get at, the fact that if MS
constrained developers like Apple does then we, the users, will be better off
in the long run. Its rather akin to the Amazon - do we cut it down now for a
quick profit, or manage it for the long term.