Re: Waiting for Orca/C

[tribby@cup.hp.com (Dave Tribby)]

"Seth D. Kadesh" (thes+@CMU.EDU) wrote:
> Anyone remember something called Complete Pascal???
> No, I'm not suggesting that the Orca C situation resembles the
> Complete Pascal fiasco.  But when I start seeing posts like this:

> astein@nysernet.org (Alan Stein) writes:
> > I ordered Orca/C upgrade over two months ago, it was immediately
> > charged to my credit card, I still haven't received it, and my email
> > to Mike Westerfield on GEnie (id BYTEWORKS) hasn't been answered.

> ... I have to say, be careful!!

I would save comparison to Complete Pascal for only the most unethical
of businesses. Vince Cooper was very difficult to contact on the
telephone, and once I did get hold of him all he did was lie to me
(he didn't have my shipping address; the next group of manuals was
arriving shortly and he would ship on Monday; the postal service must
have mis-delivered the package; he'll call me back when he has an
answer; he's waiting for Apple's 6.0 headers to ship.)

After that experience I decided when dealing with mail order to always
use a credit card, with instructions not to charge until the package
ships. That way, I can remove the charge if I do not have the product
in hand when the Visa bill arrives.

I ordered Orca/C via telephone in December. In February, I wrote Mike
Westerfield an e-mail on GEnie asking when I might get mine. It took
him about a week to respond (I don't think he logs on every day), but
a week or so later I had the new compiler. The Visa charge did not
show up until the next bill.

And *I DO LIKE* the new compiler! My current project had about 4,000
lines of C split among ~8 .c and .h files, and the compile time was
cut almost exactly in half. The only downside: I've had to switch back
to the ORCA shell since the current gno shell can't handle the way
Orca/C 2.0 generates output.

Seth, I agree that it's always a good idea to be careful. But I
believe that Byte Works is an ethical company that has just gotten
behind in filling orders. Comparison to Vince Cooper is unjustified.

-- Dave Tribby (tribby@cup.hp.com   GEnie: D.TRIBBY)