Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!dinghy.cis.ohio-state.edu!schanck
From: schanck@dinghy.cis.ohio-state.edu (Christopher Schanck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Turbo C 2.0 and EMS
Message-ID: <29154@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 88 05:48:37 GMT
References: <1624@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <4330113@hpindda.HP.COM>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer and Information Science
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In article <4330113@hpindda.HP.COM> hardin@hpindda.HP.COM (John Hardin) writes:
>>     [Various light Borland bashing]
>
>I'd like to offer a counter opinion here.  I have been programming since
>the sixties on lots of different machines and using lots of different
>languages, but when I first saw Turbo Pascal on a CP/M machine I thought
>it was the slickest thing I'd ever seen.  The reason was entirely the
>integrated environment.   

How about counter-counter-point? Look at the time frames. One, when TP first
came out, PC's with hard disk were not nearly as popular. Heck, a lot of
PC's had less that 640k! This has 2 effects. On a non-hard drive system,
command line is loads slower than integrated because of the time required to
load the compiler. This is true today; I am sure people with floppy systems
are fanatic about the integrated environment and they are right; it is 
nearly the only way to do any serious development with a hard drive. 

Now as to the memory sizes being lower, this meant smaller programs were
being developed. This meant fewer users were running up against the memory
wall when programming. 4 of my 5 ongoing projects are to large too compile 
in the integrated environment! 

I will surely agree that ther integrated environment sold lots of copies;
heck I bought one and thought it was the cat's meow, but I had 1 drive and
256k (I think...it has been awhile) at the time. But I stipulate that it was
the speed of compilation offered by the environment, not the environment
itself, that made TP so attractive. But the lowest common denominator of
hardware has been raised; the average user can get the speed of the 
integrated environment without being chained to it. 

Don't get me wrong, at some point, I will lay out the cash for the 
"Professional" package; I need the debugger to much. But the regular
version is pretty near equivalent to 1.5, so I'll leave it alone for now.

Finally, even with all this, they are still the most useful compilers on 
the market. This is more of good-naturedly aggravation with a favored
son than actual bashing. 

Smile...

Chris



-=-
"My brain is NOT a deadlock-free environment!!!!"
--- Christopher Schanck, mammal at large.
schanck@flounder.cis.ohio-state.edu