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From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Are binary groups necessary?
Message-ID: <3634@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Jul-87 17:35:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncoast.3634
Posted: Sun Jul 26 17:35:51 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jul-87 04:59:04 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <8225@utzoo.UUCP> <272@brandx.rutgers.edu> <2923@ncoast.UUCP> <300@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 41
As quoted from <300@brandx.rutgers.edu> by webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber):
+---------------
| Well, I certainly didn't advocate buying a compiler. While I will
| grant that (given sufficient funds) it is easier to buy software than
| it is to write it (and that most purchasers of Unix machines have had
| the funds to purchase a C compiler), I will not grant that a compiler
| for a language like C is so difficult to write that its lack justifies
| the transmission of binaries years after the computer was marketted.
+---------------
Hmmm. Will you then teach the engineering department at TDI how easy it is to
write a C compiler? Given that they don't have one to begin with, it'll have
to be easy to do in GWBASIC. (Hint: a dumb parser is guaranteed to botch
the syntax of "typedef", or else the semantics will be wrong. [I consider
"typedef" to be a botch, but that's another story.])
Or were you thinking of cross-compiling under UN*X? So the PC-only office
gets screwed (of course, if they're PC only they already _are_ screwed, but
that's yet another topic). Or did you think that, if I can't afford a $300 C
compiler, I can obviously afford a $10,000 UN*X box? (And YES, Turbo C
changes things -- some. If it can be gotten mail-order for $50, then it
may become useful. But even Turbo Pascal sources aren't enough to make a
program useable by everyone with a PC -- and Pascal is, if anything, _easier_
to parse than C, and has been cheap for years.
+---------------
| But of course, there are people that LIKE binaries. I remember
| reading of one software `donator' that donates binaries-only so that
| people can't make `incorrect' patches to his programs. Sigh.
+---------------
This is like claiming that binoculars are considered good by some people only
because they use them to play Peeping Tom, and otherwise they're obviously
useless. In neither case does the existence of (programmer-idiots|Peeping
Toms) affect the majority of people _properly_ using the implement. Cheap
shots are bad enough; BOGUS cheap shots are even worse.
--
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc and comp.binaries.ibm.pc
{{harvard,mit-eddie}!necntc,well!hoptoad,sun!cwruecmp!hal}!ncoast!allbery
ARPA: necntc!ncoast!allbery@harvard.harvard.edu Fido: 157/502 MCI: BALLBERY
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