Having a bit if fun on stackoverflow

Craig Dillabaugh cdillaba at cg.scs.carleton.ca
Thu Jun 27 14:34:39 PDT 2013


On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 20:43:47 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

clip
>
> That's something I never really understood about the Windows / 
> GUI
> world. The backend functionality is already all there, yet for 
> some
> strange reason the application refuses to have the means to 
> access that
> functionality, requiring instead for you to install "plugins". 
> To me, a
> "plugin" should *enhance* functionality by adding what wasn't 
> there
> before, but in this case, it seems to be more about removing 
> artificial
> barriers to reveal what has already been there all along. Same 
> thing
> goes with the iPhone emoji apps, and many other such examples.
>
> As a CLI-only person, I find this really hard to grok.
>
>

This isn't directly related to CLI, but one thing I really like
about
text file based build/configuration systems that I dislike about
IDE's is
that you can easily add comments to your build scripts/config
files to
explain why you did something a certain way. This is helpful to
you and
to anyone else who might have to tweak it later.  I also like the
sort of
inline help that some configuration files provide through the use
of comments.

I generally find a good, text-based system easier to understand
and work
with than a GUI based system.  For example, with Visual Studio I
remember writing down in a separate document that lists of steps
to perform in order to link to a particular libraries (installed
in non-standard locations) on my system, it involved lots of
clicking.

Comparatively using QMake (Qt Projects) I just find a .pro file
that links to the correct libraries and copy over the relevant
lines. Qt has the Qt Creator tool that edits .pro files for you,
but most of the time I just edit the .pro files by hand if I want
to make changes.  Qt Creator seems to be able to deal with this.

I am sure Visual Studio has a way of dealing with the problem
I've described, but you can't beat copying a few lines from a
text file for 'ease of use'.


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