EXACTLY: Microsoft Systems Journal

[kumpf@ricks.enet.dec.com (john, Alpha, hudson, ma, usa 225-4811)]

From:	US7RMC::"stevecoh@mcs.com" "MAIL-11 Daemon"   31-MAR-1998 09:08:07.46

> NO KIDDING!  So here we have the Microsoft paradigm self-exposed in it
> full glory.  The outside developer is too stupid to be trusted with such
> things as thread-locking and we don't want to talk about it too much
> because it will hurt sales of our simple, visual, anyone-can-do-it
> tools, but when things get too hot and systems start crashing, then we
> have to come clean and tell the awful truth.
> Visual Basic is a bait and switch.  It looks simple, until you have to
> do something hard, and then you get hit with the limitations and are
> stuck in some awful syntactical nightmare just to fight your way out of
> the "user-friendly" trap they've built for you.  Guess you should have
> studied the hard stuff from the start, because you still need it.

Exactly.  That's exactly what they do, and i think it's put the best
i've ever read:

	"Visual Basic is a bait and switch.  It looks simple, until
	you have to do something hard, and then you get hit with the
	limitations and are stuck in some awful syntactical nightmare
	just to fight your way out of the "user-friendly" trap they've
	built for you."

Well put.

> Reading this stuff only strengthens my resolve that MS will not be the
> last software company standing.

It seems that eventually people who can gain competitive business
advantages from having code that works well and is easy to extend, fix
& enhance will eventually stop putting up w/ MS's bad code.  At some
point the compatibility/stability vapor benefit will not be enuf.
Or will it?