[Gllug] Controversial Joel Spolsky article

[Nix]

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, Christopher Hunter uttered the following:
> Gates actually didn't ever write any code - he just claimed he did!

Cite?

>                                                                     Their 
> "original" basic interpreter actually had several bugs or varying 
> significance, so it CAN be safely said that M$ NEVER released properly 
> working code!

Um, by that measure, nobody has ever released any properly working
code. Even TeX probably has one or two undiscovered bugs lurking in it
(redefined to `features' by edict of Knuth).

What *can* be said about MS BASIC was that it was a very poor fit for
many of the systems it was used on. My experience was on a C64, and,
well, I don't think I used their BASIC for long. Nice hardware; did the
language support any of its features? Did it hell.

> Doesn't that demonstrate the attitude of M$?  Nothing much has changed!  The 
> original (and trivial) abort / retry / fail bug in DOS has endured through 
> over twenty releases!

Which bug is that? (I can think of three, none of which survived past
DOS 3.3.)

-- 
As they say, build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a
path to your door. But nobody ever got anywhere outlawing mice.
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