To: "Terry Leeper" <tleeper@microsoft.com>
Subject: Re: MASM references
From: Jonathan Kirwan <jkirwan@easystreet.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 10:40:37 -0800

Terry,

Hi.  Thanks again for helping clarify things for me.  I appreciate
being allowed to ask these kinds of questions with some idea of
getting rational and human replies.  If it's okay, I'd like to get
straight to a hope I have and get your reaction to the idea:

I enjoy writing articles and teaching.  I would like to do more in
writing about using assembly together with QB and/or QC and or VC++
1.52C, as part of learning about computer architecture and concurrent
programming.  For many teenagers I've worked with before, QB (and
perhaps QC) make excellent starting points for them.  They can
actually get things happening quickly enough to keep their interest.
And as time goes on and they get better at it, some develop further
interests and would like to dig deeper.  It's at this point that
mixing in assembly may be appropriate.

There are semantic limitations in QB; quite a few, actually.  It's
powerful, but kids should be exposed to a broader base of concepts.
So I'd like to see QC or VC++ 1.52C as another possible tool available
to them, to illustrate problems which are more difficult to solve in
QB, yet are rather nicely handled with C or a limited form of C++.

I don't like to emphasize the use of debuggers much, because I believe
depending on debuggers tends to encourage sloppy thinking and sloppy
design practices.  But there are times when a debugger is more than
invaluable.  Debuggers make good teaching tools, handled well.

I would like to be able to point people to a Microsoft download site
where they could actually get an unsupported copy of QB 4.5, ML 6.1 or
similar, VC++ 1.52C, QC, LINK, and perhaps some version of CV.  I'd be
happy to work out the details of which to use for across-the-board
compatibility between them and which linker arrangements would be
needed.  I'd also be happy to write some articles to support using
them and provide some framework for learning from them.  Perhaps even
PWB might be properly set up for this?

I believe I can be relied upon by Microsoft to cap (limit) any human
resource expenses in setting this up.  I can handle the myriad details
required to smooth the process for others and I'm more than happy to
write web pages to cover a broad range of likely questions and host
those elsewhere, relatively permanently.  I'd just like to see this
work out.

I also suspect that this might be a great use of retired products
which are no longer directly revenue-generating.  An open hand, in a
sense, for these products would add some positive goodwill for
Microsoft (even if the door is tightly shut, regarding support for
them.)  At least, so I imagine.

I honestly have very little understanding of the broader issues you
have to consider, looking at questions like these.  Perhaps you might
need to know more firmly what I'm willing to do to help in making this
a reality.  But does any part of this sound feasible to you?  Or is it
all just a pipe dream of mine?

Jon