Invisible wrote:
> Surely it's just 1 line of code? (Unless you want to do something 
> special to determine where to find the XML file...)

That. Each of the 20 different things you want to do is a line or two of 
code. And that's the boilerplate.

Zll the stuff that the XML references has to be included in the program. If 
you define a new type of widget and you want to reference that code in the 
XML, you need at least some line somewhere saying where to get that widget.

>>> Now, see, to me these kinds of tasks all belong to the set of things 
>>> which are "impossible" in the first place, so I guess I don't tend to 
>>> think about it. You can't write web browser plugins unless you're a C 
>>> programmer, unfortunately.
>>
>> Of course you can.
> 
> Oh, yeah, I forgot. You could be a C++ programmer. ;-)

Uh, no. There are lots of languages for writing web browser plugins, 
including javascript, C#, and probably others I don't know of offhand. I 
wouldn't be surprised if anything capable of doing COM could act as a web 
browser plug-in on Windows. That's kind of the point of COM.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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Darren New wrote:

> Uh, no. There are lots of languages for writing web browser plugins, 
> including javascript, C#, and probably others I don't know of offhand. I 
> wouldn't be surprised if anything capable of doing COM could act as a 
> web browser plug-in on Windows. That's kind of the point of COM.

JavaScript is the only language I know which might conceivably be able 
to do COM stuff. (If it can, I don't know how yet.)

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Invisible wrote:
> Or rather, it applies the default formatting rules, whatever they happen 
> to be for the IDE in question.

Unless you adjust the defaults.

> For example, both JBuilder and VS put the opening bracket of a function 
> on the same line as the function declaration, rather than on the next 
> line where it belongs. They also indent everything by 8 spaces rather 
> than the usual 2. And so on. (I'm not even sure *what* formatting rule 
> they apply to if-statements...)

So you go into the properties sheet for the formatter and change the indents 
and where the braces go. It's pretty straightforward.

> Large numbers of people apparently think that it's just infeasible to 
> write any code of any kind unless you have an IDE specifically targetted 
> at the programming language you're using. 

That's because they're bad programmers.

> But to me, it looks like an 
> IDE is only really beneficial if you're actually doing something 
> complex. 

Yes, or if the IDE is really good, or if the language is designed primarily 
for use with an IDE. (For example, you *can* edit by hand all the XML files 
that drive the compilation and linking in .NET. But why would you, when the 
IDE that puts a nice graphical interface on the front is free?)

> (And, further more, it looks to me that the tipping point is 
> when you start writing something more complex than any program I've ever 
> attempted in my entire life - so an IDE is probably of little to no use 
> to me...)

Well, you also use a powerful high-level language, which makes an IDE less 
useful. You also use a DE that isn't I, and you can go a long way before you 
actually get noticeably slowed down by that.

Ask yourself how easy it would be to build guis without Glade.

> Sure. But "Windows app" template? What could possibly be in it?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0fyc0azh.aspx

Try "I'm feeling lucky" on "Windows Application Template".

Sheesh.

> A document. Because, let's face it, what would a template for "a 
> document" actually contain?

Fonts. Header styles. Information that titles are centered. Code for 
formatting the table of contents if you add one. Information about what 
spell checker to use.

> Similarly, "a Windows application" could be absolutely anything. How do 
> you template that?

You don't.

> Maybe it's because I've never written any of these things, but I can't 
> imagine what (for example) two games would have in common. (And hence, 
> what you'd put into a template.)

Well, for example, you have the code that instantiates and starts the game. 
Each game inherits from the "Game" class. The constructor, by default, grabs 
you references to the graphics device manager and instantiates a couple of 
tools you almost always use that take up resources on the card so you don't 
want to instantiate them in loops, like the object you use to draw text on 
the screen. It also creates a ComponentManager, which you can put all the 
bits of your game into to control them in the loop (i.e., the same way you'd 
have all the buttons inside a window refresh when the window refreshes). It 
also creates a service manager, which lets any components get to any data 
they need without making explicit links; e.g., every component that draws on 
the screen needs to know where the camera is, so you make the cameraand the 
screen services so anyone who needs them to draw can find them.

The methods it creates include "Initialize" which gets called once before 
the window opens so you can set up the window; "LoadContent" that gets 
called once each time the window changes properties like size or color 
depth; "UnloadContent" which gets called before you exit or before you call 
LoadContent again; "Update" that gets called regularly based on clock ticks, 
and "Draw" that gets called each time you get a vertical sync.

You don't think all games are going to have these kinds of things in common?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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scott wrote:
> all be ticked by default, it's the style I prefer too).

I don't like that style, but they're all ticked by default and people are 
pretty insane about such trivial things, so I leave them how they are. :-)

> build processors set up for graphics files, meshes, sound files etc,

Yeah, I didn't even touch what was in the project besides the direct game code.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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scott wrote:
> Sorry but I never heard of anyone making a game that didn't have a "game 
> loop" and methods for rendering and methods for the game logic.  

Indeed, almost every game has input, and draws on the screen. Most even have 
sound output. Whodathunk?? ;-)

> the textures).  It saves you have to export all your data files in some 
> specific format just to get them to work with your API, the build 
> processor just does it seemlessly (obviously it detects if there has 
> been an update or not).

Plus, you can add your own processors so if you want to (say) import POV SDL 
code into your game project, you can just write a parser and use it like any 
other model. (Note: Easier said than done, in this case.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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Invisible wrote:
> JavaScript is the only language I know which might conceivably be able 
> to do COM stuff. (If it can, I don't know how yet.)

Out of curiousity, what languages *do* you know? I thought you'd worked in 
Tcl before.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: iso-8859-1, 16 lines --]

> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > > Warp wrote:
> > > >   (Besides, what is *your* definition of "IDE", if CMake isn't one?)
> >
> > > CMake is just a new version of make, or a makefile generator, I forget
> > > which. It's not integrated, and it's not an environment, any more than make
> > > itself is.
> >
> >   You said what CMake is/isn't, not what an "IDE" is...

> bash is a pretty good IDE to me.  It integrates/glues all other dev tools
> needed. :)

  I wouldn't call that integration. It just launches the independent apps.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> bash is a pretty good IDE to me.  It integrates/glues all other dev tools
>> needed. :)
> 
>   I wouldn't call that integration. It just launches the independent apps.

I think to be integrated, the tools actually have to talk to each other 
while running. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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Darren New wrote:
>>> bash is a pretty good IDE to me.  It integrates/glues all other dev
>>> tools needed. :)
>> 
>>   I wouldn't call that integration. It just launches the independent
>>   apps.
> 
> I think to be integrated, the tools actually have to talk to each other
> while running. :-)

There are pipes :)

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> >>> bash is a pretty good IDE to me.  It integrates/glues all other dev
> >>> tools needed. :)
> >>
> >>   I wouldn't call that integration. It just launches the independent
> >>   apps.
> >
> > I think to be integrated, the tools actually have to talk to each other
> > while running. :-)
>
> There are pipes :)

Excellent punchline! :)

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