Bernd Oppolzer wrote >> the support for programmers there is non-existent ... if you need it, you >> have to buy expensive compiler suites from M$
But in fact, since many years now M'$' give away their Visual Studio development environment (with a few for most developers non-essential restrictions) including nowadays VC++ compilers, tools for Web and Phone apps, the entire .Net system with its vast libraries and ecosystem and all the Windows OS APIs, Debuggers, Editors and so on completely free and including licensing for commercial use. (See e.g. http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-express-vs.aspx). I suspect btw the poor experience is 30+ years old. To run under Windows a program must use the Windows API calling conventions (e.g. for Dlls). Any compiler for Windows must be capable of doing this, and in principle be able to interact with the results of other compilers. Of course 'no one' uses ALGOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL, PL/1, COBOL, BCP etc. under Windows in any case and linking stuff from different compilers together is not so much the Windows way. In fact many Windows developers quite likely don't even know there is an object code linker, even in .Net. Mostly it's C++ and .Net Framework nowadays (C#, maybe VB.Net), plus JavaScript and a few more esoteric things in the Web world. And mostly using Visual Studio. Of course there's other possibilities for the adventurous. Most give up at some point though, what with the lethargic Java coded tools, unfixed bugs, abandoned projects etc. I don't even have Java on any of my Windows machines. Never notice its absence, I must say. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
