OT: on IDEs and code writing on steroids

[Jussi Jumppanen]

BCS Wrote:

> Has anyone ever tried building a c# project without an IDE? 

Yes.

> I don't even know if it can be done. 

It is actually very easy to do:

  http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2518

and it is even easier if you have a simple 'one file', throw 
away project:

  http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1235

> Yes you can trigger a build from the command line, but setting 
> up a project without it would require hand editing of XML (yuck) 
> and the build tool IS visual studio.

It is true that Visual Studio creates XML project/solution files
and the contents of these files is overly complex.

But these XML files are Visual Studio specific and a lot of their 
complexity comes from the fact that they contain extra information 
that is only needed by the IDE.

If you use the MsBuild approach the amount of XML that is needed to 
create a project/solution is much smaller and in general the XML is 
fairly trivial.