🚀 go-pugleaf

[apologies to anyone who saw this twice]
Denys Larry writes:

>In article <1k1sf5INNbb5@almaak.usc.edu>, ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
[...]
>|>I'm a 5th year Ph. D. student in Economics.  :-)

>  Perhaps you can apply some of that ivory tower knowledge and answer the
>real question that runs through this thread:  Just how much better than
>GCC would a compiler have to be in order for people to pay, say, $100
>for it?

	Good enough to save me about $110 worth of hassle. Enough better
to save half a days work. Hell, there are plenty of people who'd pay
$100 for a shrink-wrapped copy of GCC rather than fiddle around
installing it themselves.

> Would enough people buy it to justify development costs.

	Of course they would, assuming it was properly marketed. 
Most people I've worked for used proper development tools. Often
that means buying them - but normally it meant replacing vendor's
crappy development kits with GNU stuff.

	If you're as concerned about making a buck as you seem to be,
you'd be a fool to use a compiler because it was cheaper than the
better quality alternative.

	Obviously a $100 dollar compiler (or a $1,000 compiler) that
was significantly better than gcc would make you a killing - You think
your potential customers are all stupid or what?

--
           Matthew McDonald  mafm@cs.uwa.oz.au
I hope that Scheme won't become the Pascal of the 90's.  I hate Pascal.
						-- Scott Fahlman