David Noon wrote to Will Honea on 12-14-1998
Re: Visual Age C++

DN> The Compuserve announcement was that all 3 platforms were to
DN> receive the upgrade, to try and bring the grammars into line. After
DN> all, C++ is the most portable language in computing. 

My word was from Dwayne Moore at IBM Toronto Labs, but he is pushing
the 4.0 beta support program, so it might be skewed.

DN> Well, they couldn't possibly make it any slower.

Wanna bet?
 
DN> My main hope is that they have not tied it to LPEX to perform
DN> builds. I would still like to be able to run NMAKE myself. 

There has been a fair amount of discussion in the beta group about
just that.  Apparently, a lot of folks are of the same mind because a.
the new LPEX is broken and b. editors seem to be more of a religion
that a tool to a lot of programmers.  My sense of it is that the
makemake process will still support nmake and our own make files which
would imply compiler access.  I have seen a lot of people who are
disenchanted with the new compiler technology - no intermediate object
files, etc., as the default for example - who want to do just what you
suggest.  Besides, automating a GUI-only interface would be wellnigh
impossible.

Personally, I'm counting on the same make functionality.  With a lot
of the work I do the customer assumes long term support responsibility
(even when I tell them I'll work cheap) and I'd much rather teach Joe
NumbNuts how to type 'nmake -f makefile' than to use the visual ide
.

HEY! Talk about timing!  Just saw and announcement letter on the web:

VACPP for OS/2, NT. AIX announce, part # 30L8360, ship date 12/18/1998
- no prices yet, tho.
http://www2.ibmlink.ibm.com/cgi-bin/master?xh=WrO7uOaQeRQLSb0USenGnN9332&req


Will Honea 

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