And I don't even understand why he doesn't agree that C is a second-class citizen on Windows. Microsoft would rather have you code stuff in C++ or .Net and MSVC is stuck with the C90 standard (although apparently that is finally improving)
>more hello.c
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
puts("Hello world.");
return 0;
}
>cl hello.c
Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version
18.00.31101 for x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
hello.c
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 12.00.31101.0
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
/out:hello.exe
hello.obj
>hello
Hello world.
In what sense? MS platform had a working C compiler for decades.
Were there any (free) IDEs that took advantage of this? I thought one of the reasons Stevens used DJGPP was that MSVC wasn't available for free? I suppose I could just be that it wasn't freely distributable, which makes it hard to bundle with a book (at a time when people can't just go and download megabytes of data from microsoft.com).
Or maybe MSVC was free, but not the c++ part? See eg:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/52_Windows_pr...
(It's not my intention to move the goalposts, you say close to a decade, which means 2005 -- it's quite likely that I'm just biased due to my old age...)
I did find this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2006/06/08/622485.asp...
Which reminded me of VS express -- which isn't the same as a full version (but should/did work for "hello, world!"). See also eg: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89-net/7976-full-visual-st...
How did you get a free c-compiler from MS in the mid 90s?
In the 90s though, I used the non-free VS for the most part along with some Cygwin until Mingw's appearence in the late 90s.
Now try it using some features from that super-recent, edgy, C standard from 16 years ago, C99.
My reading was that the author just didn't know about implicit make rules. Shaw's book apparently suggests using "make" to compile and link a simple C program. The author goes on at some length about not being able to find the Makefile, apparently unaware that no Makefile is necessary.
The "make" command is rarely used without a Makefile, so this is a fairly easy mistake to make.