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From: mercury@ut-ngp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: MSC 5.0 / QuickC
Message-ID: <5474@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jun-87 17:22:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.5474
Posted: Sat Jun 20 17:22:22 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 07:04:18 EDT
Organization: University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 43

[]

In the July issue of BYTE the "What's New" column discusses (in
typically brief form) Microsoft's announcement of MSC 5.0, and QuickC.

In essence, you can buy QuickC for $99.00, more-or-less the same
thing as Borland's Turbo C but with a built-in debugger.  It is 
apparently not an optimizing compiler.

QuickC is bundled with MSC 5.0, which still costs $450, and still
comes with CodeView.  The "New" MSC 5.0 is supposed to have a
better optimizing pass (roughly 30% decrease in code execution time)
and compile roughly 3 times faster.  Microsoft claims that the compiler
(MSC 5.0, not QuickC) generates "The best code of any compiler in the
PC market today."  The MSC and QuickC products come with an enhanced
library, which (now) includes a Graphics library -- never before
included in any Microsoft brand-name language product.

The short-short mentions "third quarter 1987" as the availability
date, but I haven't gotten anything in the mail (I'm a registered user
of MSC 4.0) and I suspect that they will have an update policy of some
sort.

(Aside)

It is worth pointing out here that both MSC 4.0 and MSC 5.0 (according
to various trade mags as well as the Microsoft Developer's Journal)
generate code which is compatible with OS/2 restrictions.  The restrictions,
among other things, require that there be no variable (data) stored in the 
Code segment, no variable storage in the Code segment -- no more COM-file
like "finding the data segment" using the CS register ala Turbo Pascal
assembler routines, and not modifying the Segment registers.  COM files
will not be able to run in Protected Mode, only the Real Mode under OS/2.
Real Mode (Emulation Mode) does not allow multitasking or background
processing; all parallel execution is suspended while Real Mode
processing is in effect.

LEB
-- 

Larry Baker               Net/UUCP:  mercury@ut-ngp.{ARPA, UUCP, UTEXAS.EDU}
UT Austin                            seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!mercury
Computer Science