Invisible wrote:
> The paperclip at least can be disabled. The other unecessary 
> helpy-helper features seem to be unavoidable. (E.g., Word tries to 
> automatically format your text based on text you've recently typed. Even 
> if you expressedly don't want it to. It insists on correcting 
> capitalisation, even if you don't want it to. And so on.)

I don't know what version of Word you're running, but... I dunno, maybe the 
"Tools->Auto Correct" options is what you're looking for?

It looks pretty straightforward to me.

> It's just so frustrating that there is no way to make M$ software do 
> what you tell it to do, rather than what it thinks you want it to do. 

So far you haven't complained about anything that's not trivial to turn off.

> Computers are hopeless at figuring out what humans want!

I was surprised how good a job Word did with guessing what I wanted.

>> You can certainly still use the command line if you want.
> 
> Sure, but... you can do that for free. Presumably if you paid hundreds 
> of dollars for an IDE, you actually want to... I don't know... use the IDE?

Sure. But if you want to make a nightly build after checking out the code 
and then run that build against the regression tests, mailing failures to 
people who checked in the code that failed, you don't really want to use the 
IDE for that.

>> Not necessarily. It gets everybody working the same way, which is good. 
> I can see some value in that I guess.

It really is quite flexible. You just have to configure it how you want it.

Now I'm talking about Visual Studio for something other than Java. Maybe 
Java has particular rules about where things go. (Indeed, I know Java itself 
has such rules.) That might be what you're seeing - Java is designed that 
you don't need to #include every header your program references, so they 
chose the path of putting files in specific places so the compiler can find 
them.

>> Since I can't guess what problems your hyperbole refers to, I couldn't 
>> guess whether they fixed it or not.
> 
> It insists that your files must be arranged in a certain way.

Um, no it doesn't. I mean, if you're going to put signed code in the global 
store, then yeah. Do you mean certain files have to be in certain 
directories? It puts all the code that compiles into the same assembly under 
the project subdirectory, so you can find it, yeah. But if you don't want it 
writing the makefiles for you, you don't need to put everything in the same 
place. You can edit any file anywhere.

> It insists that your code must have a specific layout. 

No it doesn't.

> It insists on autogenerating buckets of code that you then have to manually delete. 

Only when you ask it to.

> It insists on inserting dummy comments here and there. And so on.

Only in code you ask it to generate.

> It must be really hard if you decide you want to use some sort of 
> revision control, 

Actually, it's trivially easy and you almost never notice, because it's 
built into the IDE.  When you start typing into a file, it automatically 
checks it out for you.

> since the fixed file layout has human-written source 
> code muddled up with VS configuration files, autogenerated cache files, 
> object files, and so on.

They're all in different subdirectories. Honestly, I've done some fairly 
large projects without ever looking at the layout of the files in the 
directories, other than tracking down where the actual executables went.

> On the other hand, maybe for a really large project it's not so much of 
> an issue. Maybe it's just that all this boilerplate is massively 
> overkill for a project consisting of 6 Java classes totalling about 200 
> lines?

Java has weirdnesses of its own. C# is smart enough to (for example) put any 
boilerplate into a separate file. I never see that crap.

> POV-Ray's manual teaches you every feature of the system. And I don't 
> mean it just gives you a list of all the commands and what they do, it 
> actually *teaches* you the complete system, in a coherant way.

I agree. POV-Ray's documentation is a shining star.

> As far as I can tell, no such documentation exists for any M$ product. 

Of course it does. Heck, look at C#. There's sufficient documentation that 
someone else could write a version of the compiler based on the 
documentation that outputs the same bytecodes for the same programs.

> It seems that if you want to know anything remotely "technical" about M$ 
> products, the only way to find out is to go on a course. I find this 
> very objectionable. I've paid money for this product, why can't you just 
> tell me how to operate it? Why must I now pay even more money?

Because if it came with an 800-page manual, fewer people would buy it.

You don't even want to use the automation that's turned on by default in 
Word, yet you're complaining it doesn't come with a textbook telling you how 
to automate it?

> (I wonder how many courses you have to take before you really know what 
> you're talking about?)

Lots of courses are like that, yes.  Sometimes you just have to sit down and 
plow thru MSDN online.  Welcome to computers.

When they put the new voicemail system in at Bellcore (formerly Bell Labs, 
you know, the guys who invented the telephones et al), the training started 
out with "if the phone makes a noise like this, pick up this handle and 
talk. Set the handle down when you're done. To make a phone call, pick up 
the handle, then push on these buttons..."  I politely excused myself after 
about 90 seconds, just asking for the cheat sheet that comes with the system.

> I'll bet the GCC manpage tells you what all the 
> GCC-specific options and switches do though.

Only if you already know what all the words mean.  (Actually, IIRC, the 
manpage says "go look at our interactive documentation and try to figure out 
wtf you want to know."  The interactive documentation tells you what the 
flags are. FSF doesn't like man pages for some reason I never figured out.)

> The actual code is not remotely complex, but it took *days* to track 
> down the magic command names. It really was ridiculously hard.

I don't know. As I said, I googled the obvious term, and number 12 on the 
list of the first 20 hits was a tutorial on how to do it using VBA.

> can mostly guess how it works - again, I don't see a syntax description 
> anywhere.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US/?query=visual%20basic%20syntax%20description&ac=3

Dude. MSDN is your friend. I don't know how much easier it can be than to 
type "visual basic syntax description" into MSDN and have the first hit 
being "Visual Basic .NET Language Specification."  What are you looking for?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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