From: afn03257 AT afn DOT org Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 07:50:35 -0500 Message-Id: <199701291250.HAA05157@freenet2.freenet.ufl.edu> To: Eli Zaretskii Subject: Re: DJGPP vs Borland C++ Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Lines: 63 Eli Zaretskii wrote: >On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Dan wrote: >> I suppose you cut out my comment about the long wait for proper ANSI >> complaince because? >Because you didn't explain what did you mean exactly, and I didn't want >to comment on something that I didn't understand. I use GCC on >different platforms since version 1.4.0, which was about 10 years ago, Not posible unless this is 1999. The X3J11 commitee's standard was not formally adopted until 1989. We're short 2 years by my judgement. And in 1994 [I think] the ISO amendments were made. >and it was always ANSI-compatible since the first day I've seen it. >(I'm talking >about ANSI C, not ANSI C++, of course). In those days, I hope so, since ANSI C++ doesn't exist yet, the standard is only being proposed, not accepted to date. >even Turbo C was not 100% ANSI-compliant. Again, there was no ANSI standard 10 years ago, only a commitee to form one since 84[?], I think. Nope. GCC, has not always been 100% fully ANSI complaint, there were "features" that made it act differently. Read the docs on the GCC updates line through the times, Often and I mean very often, bug XX fixed to aquire more ANSI conformance, etc.. was written. >> In that case, GNU C definately looses out since Borland's products >> are only coded by a few employees and GNU CC is coded by the world. >No, you need to only count the dedicated programmers, not the >contributors. Otherwise, you need to also count all the people who >reported the bugs (since debugging is part of development). Did they debug or just find bugs? There is a difference. Dedicated programmers? You call someone who looks through those sources, having not coded it themself, to find a bug not dedicated? then to make the patch and send it in? I'd call that dedicated. >> No there isn't, GNU C sources have been under the GPL for some time >> and it still has bugs. Just look at the gnu.* hierarchy to read up on >> 3 or 4 of them a week. >*Any* software has bugs, no matter how long it is developed. In fact, >one of the definitions of software is ``lines of codes with bugs'' ;-). What?? That is exactly what I said, and you said I was wrong. Albeit I made the distinction large software packages instead of any software since I'm sure there have been small utilities written without bugs. >The difference is that in the case of GCC, DJGPP and the rest of free >software, I usually get a solution or a work-around for any problem in >a few days, whereas with commercial products I must wait much longer, >and sometimes I'm told I'm on my own. This is true, however, technically you could patch the comercial software yourself with a debugger.