Re: The source file culture

[Thomas Lauer <thomas.lauer@...>]

steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:
----original message----
From: steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 10:23:20 +0200
Subj: Re: The source file culture
> 2009/9/8 Michal Kolodziejczyk <miko@wp.pl>:
> > So I would say it is a Microsoft (and also Apple) culture which prevents
> > you from easily compiling any available source code.
> 
> Well, Unix culture is code-based, and when balancing the needs of
> developers and users, tends to make life easier for developers.
> 
> The average Windows/Mac user is scared of command-line tools, and I
> include many intelligent engineers and scientists in this category; it
> isn't a sign of lack of intelligence; they just have different
> piorities.  Cygwin is not a solution to a problem they recognize ;) So
> I have sympathy for Lua programmers who find that C makes their head
> hurt.
> 
> Although, man, does Microsoft make compiling more difficult than it
> need be!

I agree that compiling under Win32 is not as straightforward as it could
be. Part of that has historical reasons and part has to do with the fact
that hindsight is always easier on the eyes than foresight. A good part
of it is sheer MS stupidity though.

> The decision to have a compiler-specific runtime and
> deprecate good old mscvrt.dll makes for life of headaches.

It is possible, even with the newer MS compilers (2005, 2008), to link
against MSVCRT.DLL. This is even supported in the sense that MS provides
a set of tools to do so and does it for (some of) its products as well.

-- 
cheers  thomasl

web: http://thomaslauer.com/start