Re: The Ada experience.

["Marc A. Criley" <mcq95@earthlink.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> Your complaints about VisualC++ are fair, but there are two perspectives to look at. MSVC++ is very feature-rich and well
> integrated. Gnat as a compiler is a command-line oriented thing with some add-on tools that might make it a bit more of
> an IDE. (Waiting to see what GPS provides.) In this sense, I can understand the complaint about it looking like something
> from the '60s in comparison to MSVC++.
> 
> The other perspective is that even though MSVC++ is a feature-rich, well integrated set of tools, the execution thereof
> can be quite poor. Throw on top of it the naturally difficult syntax/semantics of C++ and all the traps that implies plus
> the awkward and butt-ugly cripcrap that MSVC++ sticks into the code so it can connect up to the GUI building thing and
> you've got a royal mess. It can make you yearn for the '60s where all you wanted to do was develop for a command line.
> :-)

Ditto.

I've been working in the VC++ environment for a year and a half now, and
I continue to bang my head up against it.  (Though no small part of that
is due to the idiosyncrasies of Windows(tm) as well.)

I'm not stupid, and I've worked on a variety of platforms and IDEs over
the last nearly 20 years (Univac, VAX, Concurrent mainframe, various
Unices) and never had the ongoing struggle I experience with Windows and
VC++.  It's not the C++ that hits me, it's the (for lack of a better
phrase) Windows paradigm.

I was talking to my wife about this the other day, and she observed that
when programming Windows and VC++ it doesn't matter much how smart you
are, or skilled, or what you've studied; the only thing that matters is
what experience you have with that environment, so that you can draw on
that to work around, or avoid, problems.

Marc A. Criley