Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!iscuva!carlp
From: carlp@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Carl Paukstis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: C compilers (religious wars...)
Message-ID: <1082@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Date: 20 Jan 88 20:56:11 GMT
Organization: ISC Systems Corporation, Spokane, WA
Lines: 35


At the risk of starting a religious war - which C compiler should I buy?
I know this subject has probably been pounded to death in this group,
but I haven' been reading it.  E-mail me if you prefer.

In the current Byte, Turbo C goes for $53, with MSC at around $189, and
here's MWC special-offered at $75 for "Let's C" and "csd" - with an
offer to buy you Turbo C if you don't like MW's product.  And then some
"no-name" companies willing to give you their C AND the library source
for $29 or $39 - claimed to be a superset of Turbo.

What do I get with MSC that's worth ~$140 over Turbo?  I've heard
Codeview is really slick, but is that all there is?  And how useful is
Turbo's debugger?  (Hmmm - do we call it TC?)

Anybody have any experience with MW's "Let's C"?  I see a lot of
discussion around TC and MSC, but not too much MWC.  And what about the
"other" brands?

Do any of these things have UNIX-type toolsets (e.g. make, grep, sed)?
I've seen some of these things in PD-ware (on GEnie) - are they OK?

Oh, for background:  I will soon be getting an NEC APCIV Powermate I (AT
clone with 640K and 40mb).  I make my living writing C (and database/4GL
stuff) under UNIX and/or ULTRIX, but I'm fairly new to MS-DOS PC's.
I've been programming for 10 years and writing C for 4.  For my home
system, I plan to write mostly for recreation, utilities, maybe some
games, UNIX-like tools, etc.  I probably will get Windows, if that makes
a difference.

--
Carl Paukstis    +1 509 927 5600 x5321  |"Time is gone, the song is over
                                        | thought I'd something more to say..."
UUCP:     carlp@iscuvc.ISCS.COM         |
          ...uunet!iscuva!iscuvc!carlp  |"God bless the USA and CornNuts (R)"