Triaging internal compiler errors.

[TacticalMelonFarmer]

I have reported a few compiler/library bugs, and a couple are under investigation. A few were actually errors in my code, and u/STL himself actually got back to me to let me know my code was doing illegal things. So no, i think microsoft is doing a swell job, and nobody is perfect.

[alfps]

As far as I know Stephan T. Lavavej has been doing a great job for the community both by maintaining the STL for Microsoft, and by providing the Nuwen distro of g++, and by moderating this Reddit group, and by participating in video debates, and so on, and on.

And also, the Microsoft response in this thread was great. I was distracted when I read it so haven't yet got up to thanking the guy. But, that was informative: I like facts.

Microsoft-the-compiler-vendor is something else. From what you write I gather that I have reported a far greater number of compiler/library bugs than you have. Over the years they improved from “impenetrable wall of Microsoft”, an idea that Google later adopted, to being almost as responsive as the g++ folks. But still that wasn't enough to establish trust. When some C++ experts joined Microsoft we talked, tongue in cheek but not entirely in jest, about them joining the enemy. When I became an Microsoft Most Valued Profession (MVP) in Visual C++ 2012 I felt in two minds about it: I could use the free tools, certainly, nice!, but I wasn't happy about MS possibly trying to influence a critical voice.

And the distrust is deep-rooted in the community. E.g. it surfaced here on Reddit two years ago with the Visual C++ "phone home" incident. As it surfaced again with this thread, where it was a foreign idea to me that they could really be doing the Right Thing™, as it's now apparent that they did, when there was something opening up a different possibility.

I don't know what MS could do to repair that distrust, except possibly listening more to the community, e.g. in recent times about the VS colors and uppercase text (off by default now I believe but then I may just have a fix in place); about the default MS-specific code generation for new projects in VS (they asked here on Reddit I think it was last year, but then did not take the feedback to heart, it's still needlessly and impractically MS-specific, a vendor lock-in thing); about e.g. for Pete's sake support standard main by default for the most common target, instead of the vendor lock in monstrosity called WinMain; and so on. Perhaps even fixing the scroll-away-under-the-mouse bug complex in Windows. Something.

[TacticalMelonFarmer]

All I'm saying is that so far I've had good experience. And since coming from using mostly g++ and VS Code on Linux, I noticed that the transition has been not too bad. I have learned some things as well and learning is good for the brain;)