Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pwcmrd!skipnyc!atpal!tneff
From: tneff@atpal.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: When will Microsoft give us a *REAL WORLD* C Compiler
Summary: There's just this one little problem, you see
Message-ID: <161@atpal.UUCP>
Date: 17 May 88 22:31:41 GMT
References: <1466@microsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: tneff@atpal.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Distribution: na
Organization: President\'s Council on Astrology
Lines: 43

In article <1466@microsoft.UUCP> markro@microsof (Mark Roberts) writes:
>We would like to address some of the questions raised by these and similar
>recent articles appearing on the net.
>
   (info on MSC origins + nice P.R. boilerplate omitted)
>
>...  Some examples of Microsoft products built exclusively with C 5.0
>and/or C 5.1 (some with the addition of some MASM code) include:
>
>        MS C, QuickC and FORTRAN compilers
>        QuickBasic 4.0 and Bascom compilers
>        CodeView Debugger
>        Utilities (Linker, Librarian, M editor, etc.)
>        XENIX
   (...et cetera, all OS's and compilers)
>        Applications (Project, XENIX Word, XENIX Multiplan)
>
>... (The
>Applications group does have their own C compiler, but this was motivated
>by the need for P-code generation to save space and to add 68K support, not
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>because of any problems with the retail version.) ...

There is something disturbing about this litany.  Do we have the classic
syndrome of the compiler writers creating a product only a compiler writer
could love?  Here in the real world we are applications developers too.
Why shouldn't we believe we'd be better served if we got to use what your
own Applications group uses, "to save space" etc.  It strikes me as somewhat
telling that XENIX WORD, which of course is free to use as much RAM as the
user can afford to buy, uses MSC "native," while MS-DOS WORD -- substantially
the same product but constrained to live within the realities of the
predominant PC operating system's memory limits -- has to forgo MSC 5.x
in favor of P-code.  (This comes as no surprise to observant users who have 
noted WP.PGM et al. with interest for some time.)

Now that you've decided to sell what you claim is MS's own "inhouse editor,"
which I must admit is pretty neat -- maybe it's to to sell your P-code
"C" translator as well?

-- 
Tom Neff			UUCP: ...uunet!pwcmrd!skipnyc!atpal!tneff
	"None of your toys	CIS: 76556,2536		MCI: TNEFF
	 will function..."	GEnie: TOMNEFF		BIX: are you kidding?