🚀 go-pugleaf

Original to: dmb@xbar.ai.mit.edu
In a message of <04 Dec 1992 15:44:4>, dmb@xbar.ai.mit.edu (3:713/602)
writes:

 d> Frankly, I'm really getting sick of people saying "please think" when
 d> they simply disagree with what I'm saying.  Case in point:
 d> 
 >> Using your analogy, the command-line version of Turbo C is a vastly
 >> inferior product to the user front end, even though the front end uses
the
 >> same compiler underneath.
 d> 
 d> Yes.  That's correct.  If Turbo C had no other interface it would be a
 d> piece of worthless garbage in the eyes of typical programmers.  It
 d> wouldn't sell well.  You wouldn't ever have heard of it.

Umm. 'typical programmers'???  
If by typical programmer you mean the sort of colledge student/hobbyist,
then yeah, I guess not.  Very few professional programmers use the IDE,
simply because, again, borland didn't spend enough time making it _WORK_.
If the IDE supported makefiles, rather than those useless .PRJ files, more
people would use it.  As it stands, of the programmers I know (and we're a
pretty close clique in such a small city) almost every single one uses the
commandline version of the compiler.

Oddly enough, a number have started using DJ Delorie's port of GCC to the
PC, because it actually generates some reasonably fast code, as compared to
TC++/BC++.

I'm not saying 'please think' here - I think more like 'please look'.

 >> User interfaces to compilers are trivial relative to the code generation
 >> side of things, it's the icing on the cake.
 d> 
 d> Ah ha ha ha ha ha!  That's a good one.  Why don't you tell that to the
 d> people who worked almost exclusively on user interface issues for years
 d> at Xerox PARC?  Your claim is completely laughable.  Compiler code
 d> generation is a well-understood *science*.  User interface design
 d> is a best an arcane art, and requires voluminous amounts of code and
 d> tons of tweaking.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the point at hand.
The point is that most serious programmers don't _WANT_ the poofy IDE
approach if it cramps their style - and most do, Borland's included.

 >> Myself I would prefer a compiler
 >> which was not pretty to drive, but produced good code (its primary job)
 >> than one which looked all flash but prroduced cruddy code.
 d> 
 d> Well yourself you is not the typical programmer, which is why yourself
 d> you is happy with GCC while most of the rest of the world wants
 d> something more polished and easy-to-use.  I'm perfectly happy with GCC
 d> too, but I acknowledge that I'm not the typical computer user.

I think you're closer to the norm than you think.  But that's just my
experience -your mileage may vary.

 d> Dave Baggett

\`miff`                                                       /|\

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