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  • Re: ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft

    From Mario Rosell@3:633/10 to All on Tue Jun 2 19:20:40 2026
    Subject: Re: ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen

    ["Followup-To:" header set to comp.lang.c.]
    On 2026-05-07, Chris M. Thomasson <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 5/6/2026 1:43 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and
    IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen
    ˙˙ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260505-00/?p=112298

    ?I?ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft
    and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing
    their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks
    viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.??

    ?One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure.?

    ?A colleague recalls that while he was assigned to the IBM offices in
    Boca Raton, Florida, there was a dispute over what key should be used to
    move from one field to another in dialog boxes. The folks at IBM were
    not happy with my colleague?s decision to use the TAB key, so they asked
    him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond.?

    Ok, that resolution is funny.

    I often wonder how life would have been if I had taken that job offer
    with Microsoft in 1987.
    Fwiw, I always try to setup my editors to treat the TAB key as four spaces....

    I think TABs are cool because of this: you can set the indentation level
    to what you are used to.

    also saves space if you really need to squash four bytes.

    --
    - mario


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lynn McGuire@3:633/10 to All on Tue Jun 2 17:35:09 2026
    Subject: Re: ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen

    On 6/2/2026 4:35 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
    Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> writes:
    On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

    Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.

    What about Makefiles?


    If he actually uses make.

    (I suspect he's a windows programmer primarily).

    I have /* vim: xxx */ at the tail of each source file
    with the appropriate tabination for the source language
    or coding style guideline.

    I have not written any code on my FreeBSD box in about a week now. It
    is my webserver with about 25,000 lines of C++ code on it for automating
    web duties.

    I do not use makefiles on my FreeBSD box, I have brute force script that recompiles everything and links it all.

    For my Windows user interface with 480,000 lines of C++ code, I use
    Visual C++ 2015 to build.

    For my calculation engine with 800,000 lines of F77 code and 50,000
    lines of C++ code, I have a brute force script that calls other scripts
    to compile and link my four EXEs and three DLLs.

    Lynn


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jun 3 06:53:23 2026
    Subject: Re: ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen

    On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 21:59:05 +0100, Richard Harnden wrote:

    On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

    Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.

    What about Makefiles?

    I do what Chris does by default, but Emacs being Emacs, I can always
    hit CTRL/Q-TAB to insert a literal tab wherever necessary.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jun 3 06:58:38 2026
    Subject: Re: ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen

    On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 23:28:52 +0100, Bart wrote:

    Why wouldn't you use makefiles on Windows?

    Because Microsoft took the idea and screwed it up so badly.

    <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190325-00/?p=102359>

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lynn McGuire@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jun 4 17:28:18 2026
    Subject: Re: ?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen

    On 6/4/2026 3:54 PM, Niocl s P˘l Caile n de Ghloucester wrote:
    Lynn McGuire <LynnMcGuire5@GMail.com> wrote: | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|
    |"For my Windows user interface with 480,000 lines of C++ code, I use| |Visual C++ 2015 to build." | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

    Hello:

    Why do you use such an old version?

    Do you detect any differences in different versions of link.exe from different versions of Microsoft Software Developers Kit or Visual C++?

    I need to support e.g. Windows 10 but Microsoft does not still support Windows 10, so a person said to me that it might be best for me to not
    use the latest Microsoft Software Developers Kit.

    Thanks in advance.
    (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

    I have many customers running several different version of Windows.
    Even a couple running Windows XP on SCADA machines. Newer versions of
    Visual C++ require Windows 10, the latest requires Windows 11.

    The major differences in the Visual C++ distributables are the RTL, run
    time libraries.

    Lynn


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)