>>Why is it then that virtually all Windows products are Microsoft Foundation
>>Class based and built using Microsoft Visual C++?
> Do you know that for a fact? My last two commercial MFC projects were
> compiled using Borland. MFC is not limited to VC++ alone. There are other
> systems that use it. The problem is the linker used to make the libs.
> Microsoft changes its format with almost every release. (One reason you
> can't debug conduits with VC++ 6.0). If MS would stick to one format, in
> time, everyone would be happy. Compiler independence would be just about
> there.
Just my $0.02: I've worked on many environments with many compilers. I'm
currently working most of the time on the Mac with Metrowerks CodeWarrior,
but also work on Windows with both Metrowerks and VC++ 5.0. First, MFC is
the ugliest framework I ever seen. If MS marketing and maybe Borland's
failures hadn't helped, I don't think it would have reached this level of
popularity. Second, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a disaster. It doesn't even
know how to handle simple things like:
for (int i=1; i<10; i++) { // do some stuff... }
for (int i=1; i<10; i++) { // do some other stuff... }
I mean, the fact the "i" is used twice is something it can't grasp (in VC
5.0, didn't try 6.0). Here at my company, we have a cross platform code base
compiled for several environments, and VC++ is the one which gives us the
most headaches and troubles.
Therefore, I think that tying someone to using VC++ is a very, very bad
idea. Microsoft has a very personal view of how a language should be used,
and what features it should provide. And sometimes this view doesn't match
the standard. This is the thing I don't like, having to maintain code which
compiles and run on several platforms.
--
Florent Pillet, Code Segment [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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