Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!purdue!decwrl!pyramid!voder!kontron!optilink!cramer
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: When will Microsoft give us a *REAL WORLD* C Compiler
Message-ID: <2026@optilink.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 88 16:43:28 GMT
References: <11622@duke.cs.duke.edu> <633@psu-cs.UUCP> <21992@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA
Lines: 23

> |Let see you write a C compiler for the IBM-PC running MS-DOS WITHOUT ANY
> |MISTAKES ( 100% ERROR FREE ) on the first try !  ( NO ERRORS WHEN YOU TRY TO
> |COMPILE THE SOURCE CODE FOR THAT COMPILIER then you couse say ......... !!
> 
> Well, Microsoft C is on version 5.1.  This means a minimum of 6
> revisions of their compiler have gone out (1.0 - 5.0 major and now 5.1
> to fix a plethora of bugs in 5.0).  You'd think that after that many
> major revisions, most of the bugs would be gone, especially those
> which users have complained about repeatedly.
> 
Microsoft isn't exactly a paragon of virtue in the software testing area,
but there's a couple of mistakes in the statement above.  V1.x and V2.x
of the "Microsoft" C compiler were actually the repackaged Lattice C
compiler.  The only releases that I've seen from Microsoft were V3.0,
V4.0, V5.0, and now V5.1.

I will agree it's frustrating, and in many cases (V5.0 for example), it's
obvious that the compiler was shipped before it was quite ready (hence
the page after page of readme files on the distribution disks), but 
testing a compiler thoroughly is DAMN DIFFICULT!

I do agree with all the nasty remarks about Microsoft's level of support.

Clayton E. Cramer