[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Compatability

t-jasonb@microsoft.UUCP (Jason Barnett) (10/27/88)

What is all of this stuff about people complaining that products
are getting less and less compatable.  It is the responsibility
of the hardware manufacturer to maintain strict IBM compatability.  The
programmer can't be expected to test his/her program on every machine
in existence.

This has been just one of my opinions...

 - Jason Barnett

johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) (10/28/88)

In article <1107@microsoft.UUCP> t-jasonb@microsoft.UUCP (Jason Barnett) writes:
>What is all of this stuff about people complaining that products
>are getting less and less compatable.  It is the responsibility
>of the hardware manufacturer to maintain strict IBM compatability.  The
>programmer can't be expected to test his/her program on every machine
>in existence.

Ah, now I understand the famous high quality of Microsoft software.  By the
way, I spent three years working on a PC product (Javelin) and we did indeed
test it on every kind of PC that we could get our hands on.  Despite our
best efforts to make it as robust as possible, lots of 100% compatible
machines turned out to be 80% compatible, and you can imagine that customers
were not impressed when we explained that their 100% compatible machine wasn't.
-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869
{ bbn | think | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale will have its turn.  -G. B. Shaw