OT: non-standard language features (was Re: OT: case statements in sh)

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting Bill Campbell (Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:39:20 -0800):
[... Using non-standard features in a language ...]
> A basic problem often is that a person learns a language on one vendor's
> system, and doesn't know that things they use are unique to that vendor.
> As an example both FORTRAN and COBOL subroutine calls were completely
> recursive on Burroughs compilers.  I learned COBOL on the Burroughs
> Medium Systems (B-2500->B-4800), and had a fair amount of rewriting to
> do when moving to IBM and rmcobol systems.

A more recent example would be Microsoft's "Java" compiler, which was
really not Java, but an MS language that was "mostly Java, but with a
whole lot of Windows-specific extensions, which were conveniently not
marked as 'Windows only', so that people writing 'Java' programs would
really be locking themselves into the Microsoft Windows platform only
and not know it until it was too late".

Not that MS would put it that way, mind you.  :-)

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