5 ms·

The comparison is fatuous. If your mates had names and there was a button on your phone, one for each acquaintance by name, you wouldn't need a way of looking t

The comparison is fatuous. If your mates had names and there was a button on your phone, one for each acquaintance by name, you wouldn't need a way of looking them up. BTW I also worked on a small in-house system that was just a run-it-from-the-desktop install (aka xcopy install) and it worked perfectly. Boss insisted we needed a "proper" installer so I tried the installer-maker provided by MS. Jesus what a fucked-up mess that made of the whole process, a day of trying to get that working (while it sprayed guids and subdirectories everywhere and could't even uninstall what it installed) and I gave up. I also have a fun story of an MSSQL uninstall that went wrong on a live server. executive summary is that xcopy installs work very well IME.

dataflow 4y ago
> If your mates had names and there was a button on your phone, one for each acquaintance by name, you wouldn't need a way of looking them up. Which you realistically don't, hence the point of the comparison. > executive summary is that xcopy installs work very well IME. The point isn't the initial install, it's the subsequent lookups (including update, uninstallation, etc.) when you have a bunch of programs to deal with. When you're dealing with 1 program, you can treat it like your pet. But when you're dealing with 50, you can't do that anymore. You need to realize you have cattle and adjust accordingly.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  > Which you realistically don't Phone numbers are nothing like programs. The comparison is false. > The point isn't the initial install, it's the subsequent lookups (including update, uninstallation, etc.). Well perhaps, but if you can delete a program by literally deleting the file, and update it literally by replacing it then you are onto a good thing - unix-like simplicity. Dependencies may be a problem, or not.
  - dataflow 4y ago
    > Phone numbers are nothing like programs. The comparison is false. That wasn't the comparison in the first place. Finding the location of the program and its uninstaller is very much like an address or phone number lookup. Updating it is like updating an address book. And you need a database to maintain it all and find what you need, and something has to update that database. That's one major thing an installer does.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      OK, I see what you're getting at now. Given my experience with horrible messed up installers though, I maintain my plea for simplicity.

dataflow 4y ago

> If your mates had names and there was a button on your phone, one for each acquaintance by name, you wouldn't need a way of looking them up. Which you realistically don't, hence the point of the comparison. > executive summary is that xcopy installs work very well IME. The point isn't the initial install, it's the subsequent lookups (including update, uninstallation, etc.) when you have a bunch of programs to deal with. When you're dealing with 1 program, you can treat it like your pet. But when you're dealing with 50, you can't do that anymore. You need to realize you have cattle and adjust accordingly.

zasdffaa 4y ago
> Which you realistically don't Phone numbers are nothing like programs. The comparison is false. > The point isn't the initial install, it's the subsequent lookups (including update, uninstallation, etc.). Well perhaps, but if you can delete a program by literally deleting the file, and update it literally by replacing it then you are onto a good thing - unix-like simplicity. Dependencies may be a problem, or not.
- dataflow 4y ago
  > Phone numbers are nothing like programs. The comparison is false. That wasn't the comparison in the first place. Finding the location of the program and its uninstaller is very much like an address or phone number lookup. Updating it is like updating an address book. And you need a database to maintain it all and find what you need, and something has to update that database. That's one major thing an installer does.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    OK, I see what you're getting at now. Given my experience with horrible messed up installers though, I maintain my plea for simplicity.