What Makes A Programming Language Good

[Adam Ruppe]

Daniel Gibson wrote:
> That'd suck horribly for bigger projects, and also when
> you've got a lot of dependencies, I guess

Maybe, especially if the dependencies have dependencies (it'd
have to download one set before knowing what to look for for
the next set), but that is a one time cost - after the files
the first time, no need to download them again.

It could probably cache the dependency list too, though I'm
not sure the lag of checking it again is that bad anyway.


Though, IMO, the biggest advantage for a system like this is
for small programs instead of big ones. If you're doing a big
program, it isn't much of an added effort to include the
deps or manually script the build/makefile. You probably have
some compile switches anyway.

For a little program though, it is somewhat annoying to have
to list all that stuff manually. Writing out the command line
might take longer than writing the program!


> Or, even better: combine both ideas: Automatically create and
> save a list of dependencies by trying (like you described).

Yea, that'd work too. It could possibly figure out whole packages
to grab that way too, instead of doing individual files. It'd be
a little extra effort, though.