Turbo C 2.0 vs MSC 5.1

[Stephen Uitti]

> informed discussion of ease of manual reading & use of interupts
> deleted.
TC - Borland's Turbo C compiler.
MSC - MicroSoft's C compiler (big momma rather than Quick C)

I have TC 1.5 (some dispute over the version number), TC 2.0, and
MSC 5.0.  I don't have MSC 5.1.  I bought MSC 5.0 because i had
some MSC code that i wanted to compile.  It didn't compile.  I
could make it compile, but not easier than porting it to TC.  The
problem was that the code was written using MSC 4.0.  MSC 5.0 has
infinite bugs, is slow to compile, has a horribly complicated
command line interface, comes with a tiny compiler (quickc) that
has a good environment, but is not quite compatible, and is not
really a production compiler (doesn't support enough of the
machine models).  TC has a nice environment (though the editor
isn't MY editor), compiles quickly, has lint-like features,
better than UNIX lint, understands the ANSI features (and does
the right things with them), supports the machine well, has good
manuals, has an awesome debugger, assembler.

I'm told that MSC 5.1 is better than 5.0 - that it doesn't die
when compiling stuff, and that it produces correct code more
often.  I'm unlikely to get the upgrade, even if it is free.  The
fact will remain that the compiler will produce code slowly, and
it will be a pain to get the compiler to do anything at all by
comparison.  I never did find a bug in either TC 1.5 or TC 2.0.
That's the way i like it.  I only ever called customer support to
upgrade.  I only upgraded to get the debugger.

Curiosly, i'm a UNIX hack with 8 years of experience, and i do
makefiles.  Under TC, however, i don't bother with makefiles - i
just use the integrated environment and set up a project file.
It is easy.  It compiles 7000 lines per minute on my 7 MHz XT
clone (we're talking 8 bits at a time here).  My 386/25 running
UNIX doesn't compile stuff faster, and you still have to run
lint, and you have to wade through the output looking for
something that means "you have a bug", rather than TC's "look at
this and fix it and it will be one less thing to go wrong".  I
turn on all errors and warnings in TC.  I use prototypes.

Stephen.