4 ms·
> C was designed on UNIX, and was basically made for UNIX. That's a matter of historical record. But to say that on Windows everything is a little "off", doesn'
by jasonlotito 11y ago
> C was designed on UNIX, and was basically made for UNIX. That's a matter of historical record. But to say that on Windows everything is a little "off", doesn't quite do it justice. I understand that the book is aimed at the uninitiated, but to put it that mildly is an understatement of epic proportions.
Yeah, this was the fist sign I wouldn't read to the end, and I was right. The author just says this, and leaves it at that. As if we are to just take his word for it. This is essentially what this argument boils down to:
"He said X, I say X++." No explanation, nothing to backup what he says, nothing other than a to suggest it's a epic understatement.
Let's put this another way: my comment is has more to backup what I say than this article. The author might be right, but he doesn't back it up.
- ufo 11y agoAnd I don't even understand why he doesn't agree that C is a second-class citizen on Windows. Microsoft would rather have you code stuff in C++ or .Net and MSVC is stuck with the C90 standard (although apparently that is finally improving)
- hoodoof 11y agoWhen Windows first came out, the ONLY programming language for it was C. Nothing else.
- e12e 11y agoArguably, the only programming environment that's been bundled with windows is qbasic...?
- enry_straker 11y agoAssembly was always an option, though a painful one.
- e12e 11y agoOn the bright side, the author's hate for implicit make-rules, and inability to grasp the pedagogic value of showing implicit includes first, and -Wall later made me go and test the following in a "command prompt for VS2013" on windows: >more hello.c int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { puts("Hello world."); return 0; } >cl hello.c Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 18.00.31101 for x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. hello.c Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 12.00.31101.0 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. /out:hello.exe hello.obj >hello Hello world. Things are getting better.
- bzz01 11y ago>Things are getting better. In what sense? MS platform had a working C compiler for decades.
- e12e 11y agoWorking, and "easy to use" isn't the same thing. For one thing, this is a gratis compiler from MS.
- shadowfox 11y agoNot quite sure what is new here. The MSVC compiler has been available for free for close to a decade at least and command line compilation was available ever since I first used it (in the mid 90s)
- e12e 11y agoI wasn't aware of that. I suppose it came with the driver dev kits? I've not really been into windows development, but I thought I'd at least have brushed up it accidentally if one could use the official MSVC compiler to produce shareware and commercial software for free? Were there any (free) IDEs that took advantage of this? I thought one of the reasons Stevens used DJGPP was that MSVC wasn't available for free? I suppose I could just be that it wasn't freely distributable, which makes it hard to bundle with a book (at a time when people can't just go and download megabytes of data from microsoft.com). Or maybe MSVC was free, but not the c++ part? See eg: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/52_Windows_programming.php http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/52_Windows_pr... (It's not my intention to move the goalposts, you say close to a decade, which means 2005 -- it's quite likely that I'm just biased due to my old age...) I did find this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2006/06/08/622485.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2006/06/08/622485.asp... Which reminded me of VS express -- which isn't the same as a full version (but should/did work for "hello, world!"). See also eg: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89-net/7976-full-visual-studio-now-free.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89-net/7976-full-visual-st... How did you get a free c-compiler from MS in the mid 90s?