Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Linker to the Facts
Recently, Joel Spolsky (Joel On Sofware) has been bemoaning the fact that .NET does not include a linker. Last week he said,
If you're going to state facts, then state them correctly. No Windows version of FoxPro has ever had a linker. The linker was available in FoxPro DOS and it create a HUGE executable.
Look, I used to be a program manager at Microsoft, and there's a really strong tendency in that culture to treat customer requests as fun intellectual challenges to be fended off like exercises in debating class. But I've been talking to customers since the days of the Visual Basic 1.0 runtime in 1991 -- thirteen years ago! who have been begging for this problem to be addressed. Jason, why don't you go talk to somebody on the FoxPro team. In the late 80s FoxPro clobbered dBase in the market mainly on the strength of the fact that it compiled standalone executables. FoxPro had a linker. xBase developers pleaded with Ashton-Tate, makers of dBase, to develop or acquire a linker, but Ed Esber, reviled CEO of Ashton-Tate, refused to give them one. Learn from your own history. (Thanks to Rick Chapman for reminding me of history repeating itself.)
If you're going to state facts, then state them correctly. No Windows version of FoxPro has ever had a linker. The linker was available in FoxPro DOS and it create a HUGE executable.
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