dn>systems - do you seriously consider it wise to limit your 
dn>choice of operating systems to those which are supported by 
dn>the whims of ONE compiler vendor (even C/C++ programmers 
dn>don't have to suffer this under Windows)? To produce 
dn>solutions which work in only ONE platform which is already 
dn>in decline and where there is no long term committment to 
dn>support coming from anywhere?

   Another related issue is that of debugging and producing warnings when
compiling.  If you have one C compiler that has a good debugger and another
that produces good code then you can get the benefits of both worlds.  Also
if you have 2 C compilers and neither of them gives the quality and
quantity of warning messages at compile time that you desire then you can
compile problem code with both of them to help find bugs (I have actually
done this to debug code - I know I could have used a debugger, but it was
so much easier to just compile with a different compiler and have it tell
me where my mistake was).
   Another big advantage of standardisation is that you can develop code
initially for an OS such as OS/2, then port it to DOS for the final
product.  That's how I completed many of my final year computer science
projects.  Debugging OS/2 programs is much easier.


   cya
___
 X MR/2 2.0 NR X Windows: an Unrecoverable Acquisition Error!

--- Maximus/2 2.01wb




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