Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Standard for file transmission Message-ID: <2989@bsu-cs.UUCP> Date: 11 May 88 18:24:52 GMT References: <292@cullsj.UUCP> <537@sol.warwick.ac.uk> <4521@hoptoad.uucp> <2894@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1083@maynard.BSW.COM> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 28 In article <1083@maynard.BSW.COM> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes: [justifying the claim that source postings are an adequate substitute for binaries] >Nope. All you need is Turbo-C (about $60 retail) and Turbo Pascal (a bit >less, I think). ... >I can't understand someone spending thousands of dollars on PC hardware, >hundreds of dollars on modems and telephone charges, and then balking at >shelling out 60 bucks for an _excellent_ C compiler! This misses the point. If somebody posts source that is compilable only by the Datalight C compiler, or by MIX C, or by Microsoft Pascal, or by Utah Pascal, or by CHASM, or by the Microsoft Macro assembler, or by any of dozens of other language translators, having Turbo C and Turbo Pascal would likely mean an investment of a few days or weeks (or months) making that source work. As I said before, microcomputer operating systems costing less than $300 do not come bundled with any decent language translators. Users buy their own, and they are seldom compatible with each other. ANSI C and cheap, conforming C compilers may change this to an extent. But there will always be many things that will not be efficiently doable in portable C. High-performance graphics are one glaring example. Finally consider that not all users are, or want to be, programmers. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP:!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi