Frustrated developers rip Microsoft in hidden source-code comments

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Software developers working with Microsoft products express their frustrations with the company in comments hidden in source code.

/* Microsoft should go to hell....*/

So reads one of the hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of anti-Microsoft comments you can find in source code files by looking through Google Labs' Code Search.

And this one's pretty tame, considering some of the foul vitriol lurking in programming code in projects, big and small, hobbyist and commercial, Perl and Python, C++ and C# and in every other language you can think of.

Just what is it about our friends in Redmond that raises such ire among coders? David Ramel, writing in Application Development Trends -- part of the 1105 Media family -- documented dozens of examples of hidden comments in software source code revealing the developers' true feelings. Among the examples:

// These two functions are not necessary under gcc 2.95, but MSVC++ won't compile
// without them. BILL GATES MUST DIE!
(see code)

"Network APIs think only in UNICODE. Yes, Microsoft screwed up the function prototypes."

"A clear thinking person might assume that this should go in grGlideShutdown, however Microsoft claims it should go here in DLL_PROCESS_DETACH..." (see code)

"First off, VC7 does not allow a lot of the linker command options in pragma's. There is no honest or good reason why Microsoft decided to make this change, it just doesn't." (see code)

The following code is a hack to work around a microsoft bug with lockfile. (see code)

To read the full article at ADT, click here.

NEXT STORY: Marathon looks to broaden fault tolerant computing

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