Re: Future for VC++ Programmers

I don't want a system that can't back up files if there are any users logged on.

I don't want a system where the way applications do useful things is to spawn shell
scripts. And these scripts only work if the correct version of the shell is installed on
the machine, and the search paths haven't screwed up, and the utilities that the shell
script uses aren't broken, or at least aren't broken relative to the standard versions on
my machine, for whatever standard version we're talking about this week.

I don't want a system where it is assumed after a crash that the entire file system will
be unrecoverable.

I don't want a system which, if it crashes while I'm editing a file, every trace of that
file is gone after a reboot.

I don't want a system in which there are at least three mutually incompatible and
non-communicating clipboards.

I don't want a system in which moving the mouse over a window activates the window.

I don't want a system in which there are at least four different standards for GUI
interfaces, all of which are mutually exclusive. Your app will only work correctly if you
have GUI system <name here> version n running on X windows version m, as long as your
program was compiled by version k of the compiler with version w of the libraries.

I don't want a system in which legitimate graphics drawing commands do the equivalent of
bluescreening the system (crash X windows).

I don't want to predicate my business success on a system that is maintained by
seventeen-year-olds. Especially the kind who speak their native language as a second
language (that is, they speak C as their first language and are inarticulate in *any*
natural language used between human beings; the only ones scarier are those that speak C
as a second language, since Real Programmers speak Assembly Code)

I don't want a system in which "I can tweak it until it does everything I need because I
have the source code" only to find that the only system in the known universe on which my
program can run is my system, and I can't distribute my product unless I can convince the
powers-that-be that my fix will not break every other application in the known universe
and can become part of the standard distribution, OR I'm willing to create and distribute
my own version of the operating system, AND I have time and energy to convince all my
customers that my private version (a) is stable (b) runs all existing applications and (c)
is not really just a fancy Trojan that is going to send me their business plans.

I don't want an environment in which the compiler, the linker, and the debugger will, at
various times, simply fail to do their job; the compiler generates bad code; the linker
fails to link correctly, and the debugger crashes. I took these states for granted when I
used Unix; it was a common occurence that one or the other of these critical components
failed to work in sufficiently subtle ways that I could spend a week determining that what
I saw in the executable bore no resemblance to the code that should have been there.

Anyone who thinks that having Vista, Server 2003, XP and Win2K as platforms to support has
never had to support a product on 30 different versions of *x (where "Un" was true for
less than half, but was trademarked, so we had HPUX, Ultrix, Aegis, and more other
synonyms for systems) whose compilers had mutually exclusive and contradictory bugs, I do
not want a system in which the nesting of #ifdef <platform conditional> is so complex that
the only way to see what code is actually generated is to read the preprocessor output.

In other words, if Win98 is crap, we have not yet invented the word to describe Unix in
comparison.

I was never so happy as the day I stopped using Unix.
joe
On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 00:18:43 +0000, Bob Moore <> wrote:

On 26 Dec 2006 08:53:23 -0800, marcoera@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

What about giving a look to Linux's world?

Because I don't want to spend as much time waiting for my machine to
reboot after yet another crash as I did waiting for a Sun server to
reboot after yet another crash in the mid nineteen-eighties.

Let's face it. If I _want_ primitive crap, I can always just install
Windows 98.
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
.

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