4 ms·

Visual Studio programmers that can write a makefile are not many That's a good thing, to be honest. One person fewer who needs to worry about stupid semantic d

by sid0 16y ago

Visual Studio programmers that can write a makefile are not many That's a good thing, to be honest. One person fewer who needs to worry about stupid semantic differences between tabs and spaces is one person happier.

rbanffy 16y ago
There are far more distressing things in C programming, specially on the Windows platform, than semantic whitespace. I would find debugging makefiles... enjoyable compared to writing Windows C++ code.
- georgieporgie 16y ago
  > enjoyable compared to writing Windows C++ code. Care to share what you find so distressing in Windows C++ coding? I'm genuinely curious. I hear a lot of people -- primarily Linux C coders -- bashing Windows[1], but they never seem to have any specific reasons, at all. I chalk it up to subjective taste and something that's like imagined oppression, or imagined insult (e.g. Windows is too easy to code on, dues aren't paid, etc.). [1] I can rarely nail down if they dislike the Windows user experience, Visual Studio, the Windows API, it just seems like Windows-oriented angst.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It's mostly taste, really. You can do almost everything you do in one environment on the other. What I dislike most in Windows is the standard APIs and datatypes. Not only they "feel" more complicated, the naming and casing conventions are plain ugly. I will dig up some examples from my WinCE days. It's gotten a lot worse since I started writing most of my code in Python (2001-). I can't look at C code for Windows and consider it elegant anymore.
    - georgieporgie 16y ago
      Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Not that there's anything wrong with subjective preference, I just usually see it stated as if it were simply a known fact. If it's any comfort, I find most Unix/Linux APIs I've looked at to be painful, and long for (most) Windows API functions. :-) One thing Unixy people seem to hate is "Hungarian" naming of variables. Granted, like most things, it can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but I've always really liked it.
      - sid0 16y ago
        Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Yes, while I don't particularly like Win32, GNU make is objectively horrible.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        > GNU make is objectively horrible. It is, but it's simple, clear and readily understandable. It will never surprise you. I have come to dislike surprises that happen during build ;-)
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        > I've always really liked it. Every time I have to parse Hungarian notation, I feel compelled to change my name and renounce my ancestry ;-) But it's a matter of taste. I also find it weird to start method names with uppercase in C#. Again, taste.

by sid0 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago

There are far more distressing things in C programming, specially on the Windows platform, than semantic whitespace. I would find debugging makefiles... enjoyable compared to writing Windows C++ code.

georgieporgie 16y ago
> enjoyable compared to writing Windows C++ code. Care to share what you find so distressing in Windows C++ coding? I'm genuinely curious. I hear a lot of people -- primarily Linux C coders -- bashing Windows[1], but they never seem to have any specific reasons, at all. I chalk it up to subjective taste and something that's like imagined oppression, or imagined insult (e.g. Windows is too easy to code on, dues aren't paid, etc.). [1] I can rarely nail down if they dislike the Windows user experience, Visual Studio, the Windows API, it just seems like Windows-oriented angst.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It's mostly taste, really. You can do almost everything you do in one environment on the other. What I dislike most in Windows is the standard APIs and datatypes. Not only they "feel" more complicated, the naming and casing conventions are plain ugly. I will dig up some examples from my WinCE days. It's gotten a lot worse since I started writing most of my code in Python (2001-). I can't look at C code for Windows and consider it elegant anymore.
  - georgieporgie 16y ago
    Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Not that there's anything wrong with subjective preference, I just usually see it stated as if it were simply a known fact. If it's any comfort, I find most Unix/Linux APIs I've looked at to be painful, and long for (most) Windows API functions. :-) One thing Unixy people seem to hate is "Hungarian" naming of variables. Granted, like most things, it can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but I've always really liked it.
    - sid0 16y ago
      Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Yes, while I don't particularly like Win32, GNU make is objectively horrible.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        > GNU make is objectively horrible. It is, but it's simple, clear and readily understandable. It will never surprise you. I have come to dislike surprises that happen during build ;-)
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > I've always really liked it. Every time I have to parse Hungarian notation, I feel compelled to change my name and renounce my ancestry ;-) But it's a matter of taste. I also find it weird to start method names with uppercase in C#. Again, taste.