From: rbs{at}snippets.org
To: c_echo{at}yahoogroups.com

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 Charles Angelich wrote:

> I've always used Borland's C compiler for the majority of DOS coding
> here. I have used Pacific C (now free) but not the more recent version
> of Pacific.

Likewise... I've put in a lot of hours with Borland compilers (I *hate*
the current 5.5 product!), but only took Pacific out for a test drive some
years ago. The older Borland compilers were quite decent. My only serious
complaint about them is that Borland's better compilers couldn't digest a
lot of published C code written for MSC, and that their later compilers
which could digest MSC code were nowhere near as good.

> My memories of the introduction of GPL by Stallman was that it _reduced_
> the amount of C code being freely distributed and discussed rather than
> increased it (as people seem to think it did). His insistence on
> licensing, even though GPL, made programmers more aware their code was
> being used to earn money by others and made them more paranoid about
> sharing said code.
>
> Q: Is this how you interpreted those events at the time or am I the only
> one who saw GPL as a 'negative' overall?

I've always viewed GPL as an abomination. It accomplishes little other
than muddying the waters.  I bet Stallman is really popular around
Christmas/birthday/anniversary/etc. times - "Here's your gift and here's
the list of what you can and can't do with it."

> Pacific C might be another alternative for DOS?

Quite possibly, but I don't know enough about it to recommend it.

> My perspective is that using "Hello World" as a test is a
bit deceptive
> overall. Even if inclusion of stdio.h and it's somewhat bloated printf()
> does produce large executables the 'hit' happens only one time in a
> larger application suite of C code.

The only thing you can tell from a "Hello world" program is the size of
the essential C runtime components. I've found it tells you little about a
compiler's overall ability to produce tight code.

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