Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ubvax!ardent!kmw From: kmw@ardent.UUCP (Ken Wallich) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Microsoft cuts corners, actually Message-ID: <537@ardent.UUCP> Date: 19 Aug 88 17:02:59 GMT References: <7988@cup.portal.com> <5832@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <1289@thumper.bellcore.com> <6766@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> Reply-To: kmw@ardent.UUCP (Ken Wallich) Organization: Ardent Computer Lines: 44 In article <6766@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> imp@crayview.msi.umn.edu (Chuck Lukaszewski) writes: > >First, Microsoft has acquired a deserved reputation in the last two years that >they rush products to the market. [...] > >Also in fairness to Microsoft, this reputation is recent and can be fixed, I >think. CAN be fixed, yes, WILL be fixed? I doubt it. Recent? Geesh, one gets the impression that you haven't been using Microsoft products very much. I have NEVER liked Microsofts' software. The company started by writing hacked code that sorta worked, and has continued with this as a business plan. On the Mac side, lets take Microsoft BASIC. This was the first "language" available for my 128k mac, so I bought it. The documentation was mediocre, but then so was Apples, so I can't really complain about that. It was trivial to crash your mac running Microsoft BASIC. Within 6 months or so of it's release (I think I have the timing right), they released an update that cost 1/2 of the cost of the original package (sound familiar?). In this case, however, you didn't get an entire new system, with new manuals and MAJOR upgrades. This was suppose to be a significant performance improvement because what they did was replace the serially scanned symbol table with a hashed one. This company had been writing BASIC interpreters for a few YEARS before the Mac one, and they hadn't learned to HASH THE SYMBOL TABLE? Geesh, I used hashing in my "mock" interpreter several years earlier in college. Anyway, it sped up the interpreter about 5%, which wasn't worth the cost. By then I had a C compiler, so I put away this package forever. Of course, when the new versions of the MacOS came out, Microsofts products all broke. If they haven't learned how to follow the programming guidelines YET, then I doubt they ever will. I figured out then that Microsoft hadn't grown up, just out. They made more products for more machines, but the quality hadn't improved over the years. I haven't bought a Microsoft package since. -- Ken Wallich Ardent Computer Corp uunet!ardent!kmw Sunnyvale, California, USA "Slimey? Mud hole? My HOME this is!"