Re(4): The first cargo cults

Heh. Flattery will get you nowhere. ;-)

I'm not necessarily opposed to wizards and generated code (in fact, I'm writing a script to generate accessors for database code from an SQL file); what annoys me is the tendency to use wizard code without understanding what it does or what its possible consequences are. (That, and the horrific quality of most generated code.)

-- :wq

Comment on Re(4): The first cargo cults

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Re^5: The first cargo cults by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 13, 2002 at 08:36 UTC
Well exactly. It's not like I don't try to make life easier on myself, either. In fact I tend to write scripts for just about every task I may end up doing more than 2 or 3 times. What annoys me most is how most wizards don't even give me a chance to understand what they're doing. I tried to get into VC++ - but it generates such a wad of code for anything but the most unrealistically trivial projects that I gave up trying. I found myself annoyed at the "doubleclick SETUP.EXE" culture in Windows - sure it's convenient, but what does it do? Now I'm using Perl on Slackware Linux. All modules are available in generally not overly hard to read source. I build all the software I install from source and use checkinstall to keep track of what `make install` actually did. No, this is not an MS bashing - if others can arrange with Windows and companions more power to them, I couldn't, I hated the guts of the bunch. I understand that many people don't care about computers and want to just get stuff done with one and then get on with their lives. But I found the trend is to cater exclusively for that class of users.	[reply]

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Re^5: The first cargo cults
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 13, 2002 at 08:36 UTC

Well exactly. It's not like I don't try to make life easier on myself, either. In fact I tend to write scripts for just about every task I may end up doing more than 2 or 3 times.

What annoys me most is how most wizards don't even give me a chance to understand what they're doing. I tried to get into VC++ - but it generates such a wad of code for anything but the most unrealistically trivial projects that I gave up trying. I found myself annoyed at the "doubleclick SETUP.EXE" culture in Windows - sure it's convenient, but what does it do?

Now I'm using Perl on Slackware Linux. All modules are available in generally not overly hard to read source. I build all the software I install from source and use checkinstall to keep track of what make install actually did.

No, this is not an MS bashing - if others can arrange with Windows and companions more power to them, I couldn't, I hated the guts of the bunch. I understand that many people don't care about computers and want to just get stuff done with one and then get on with their lives. But I found the trend is to cater exclusively for that class of users.

[reply]