tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (09/23/86)
My article comparing MPW C with Consulair C came to the attention of our
senior Mac programmer, Gary Fitts, and prompted some comments of his own.
He does not share my negative opinions about the Consulair C compiler. I
certainly share his opinions concerning quality of support - this is still
an unknown with MPW C, but in general Apple is overloaded with requests and
so is physically incapable of providing really top-notch support (though
it does try). Since Gary doesn't have direct access to USENET, I am posting
this for him.
-- Message from Gary Fitts follows --
Recently Tim Maroney, one of our engineers, outlined his problems
with Consulair C, and gave his reasons for prefering beta MPW.
While it's true that MPW has tighter code generation, there is more
to the story. Consulair C still has more versitile code generation
(A4 or A5 as the data pointer, great assembly language interface),
and they still have the best support in the business. I have purchased
and tried Aztec, Softworks, Lightspeed, and MPW, and while they all have
some particular advantages, Consulair is still the easiest to use for
compiling Mac Tops (the Mac side of our Mac-IBM-Unx network).
Each of the others has some built-in architectural limitation that in
the end outweighs its advantages. MPW's great code generation, for example,
is done at the expense of any versitility with unusual register
requirements (the infamous A5 problem). Lightspeed went to great lengths
to eliminate the need for assembly language, and then included only the
crudest assembly-interface support, making life very difficult for
system level programming.
Consulair started out with some of these problems too, but one of their
real strengths is that they listen to their customers. Bill Duval was
always available to discuss C problems, and the turnaround time between
a bug report or feature request and its fix or implementation was amazing.
Any competitive evaluation of C compilers should take this into account.
The ability to evolve with its users is at least as important as the
current state of the software, and Consulair has been by far the most
responsive company in the business. I see no reason why this shouldn't
continue.
Gary Fitts, Centram Systems, Berkeley
--
Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot
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