AH! Thank you.
One reason: Because it had been done a particular way previously when
Microsoft acquired some company (that wrote a better compiler), and they
then released it under the Microsoft name without taking out the few parts
they disagreed with (because they didn't deem them important enough
issues to slow down public sales).
The history of Visual C++ that can be found at
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_C++#History> is inconsistent
with that possibility - the last outside source mentioned in that
history was Lattice C, created by Lifeboat Associates, which was the
basis for Microsoft C 1.0, dating back to 1983. The thirty years that
have passed since then have been more than long enough for Microsoft to
review, and if desired, rewrite every single line of code in that compiler.
Even if such a reason did apply, it would just mean that, while
Microsoft might agree with you, Lifeboat Associates apparently did not,
and you describe their compiler as "better".
But it seems far more likely that, sometime during the last thirty
years, someone at Microsoft did, somewhere along the line, sit down and
think about this issue, and deliberately decided on the order that you
disapprove of, at least for this case. Whether that was a matter of
endorsing a decision previously made by Lifeboat Associates, or
reversing it, I have no idea.
