From: Weiqi Gao <weiqigao AT a DOT crl DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.os.msdos.djgpp,rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: The numer 1 compiler, DJGPP or MSVC  Here's a good rating comparision
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 12:00:24 -0500
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Joel Rosenthal wrote:
> 
> Now I have two compilers:
> DJGPP 2.1
> MSVC Professional 1.0
> 
> I will rate these compilers:
> Price: DJGPP is free, but MSVC 1.0 I got in a book and it probly would
> cost that much at all.

MSVC 1.0 Professional's list price was about US$200.00.

> How much Hard disk space it takes up: MSVC takes up more space, but it
> has more tools.

Not true.  A complete installation of MSVC 1.0 Pro is about 100MB.  And
a complete DJGPP installation (the Whole DJGPP archive) is way beyond
that.  The DJGPP archive in its compressed form is more than 150MB.

Also, MSVC, even the latest version (5.0) has around 100 tools ("ls -l
C:\MSDEV\BIN | wc"), while DJGPP has close 300 tools.

Granted, MSVC has some tools that DJGPP doesn't have.  Most of them are
Windows tools, which DJGPP doesn't concern itself with.

On the other hand, the tools that DJGPP has and MSVC doesn't have are
all essential programmer's everyday tools (like grep, sed, gawk, even tr
and paste, not to mention bash and GNU find.)

> Compilation speed: DJGPP is very slow, but MSVC 1.0 is very fast.

The is machine and configuration dependent.  DJGPP requires a bit more
memory and has a somewhat longer initialization time.  After that, DJGPP
may very well be faster than MSVC.

> How easy it is to use libraries: DJGPP makes it very simple to use
> libraries, MSVC is a lttile harder but you get the Library Manager
> 
> IDE: Rhide is ok, but Microsoft Visual Workbench crushes it!

EMACS crashed the Visual Workbench in MSVC 1.0 Pro.

> command line compiling: MSVC is lousy when you want to compile at the
> command line.  You have to put in so many options!  DJGPP is easier.

Wrong again, DJGPP has many more command line options than MSVC.  MSVC's
options can be described in only two 25x80 screens, while DJGPP (well,
gcc)'s options needs at least ten screens.

> Overall, on a scale of 1-10, I'd give MSVC a 7 and DJGPP a four.

DJGPP should be at least a nine.

--
Weiqi Gao
weiqigao AT a DOT crl DOT com