From: jamesd@com.informix.com
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 95 22:28:44 PST
Subject: Even more unix holy war. Was "Clinton freezes U.S. assets .."
Message-ID: <9501270629.AA00372@carbon.informix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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And another vast advantage of DOS Windows is that it is 
a vastly better environment for developing software than unix.

The great strength is of course symbolic debugging -- you can
single step your compiled code, and see it displayed symbolicly,
with the symbols and statements of your source code, whilst
unix programmers are usually reduced to picking through core 
dumps like grave robbers.

You can run your program under the debugger and set it so that
when an exception condition occurs, bingo you are in the debugger
at the line where the exception occurred, and all the variables
as they were when the exception occurred, and the rest of windows,
the graphical user interface, has been frozen until you examine 
the situation to your satisfaction.

Try that in Unix.

You might be able to do a crude and limited equivalent with 
a text mode program, but with a GUI program you are hosed.

This is the basic reason why unix software sucks -- because the
tools for writing it suck.

And every unix programmer gets to roll his own user interface,
which means that every programmer has to figure out how to 
roll his own user interface and every programmer does it 
differently.

And windows has the *.rc file system for internationalization.

A simple and powerful method for putting everything that needs
to be translated in one set of files, and nothing that needs to
be translated in the other set.  Unix has no equivalent.  So 
every company that needs to internationalize its product hand
rolls their own ragged equivalent to to windows *.rc and *.res
files, but it cannot be the same because they never hand roll
the tools for manipulating and using *.rc and *.res files.

Windows has power tools for dealing with this problem.  Unix
does not.  And the power tools that unix does possess not only
do not adequately address this problem, they are also likely
to cut your hands off.


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