From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <3f612357ff2f02558e46528f366564cf@quanstro.net>
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:30:35 -0600
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] new compilers
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this sort of programming has a lot in common with the stage of learning
a language where you understand the grammar but don't know the vocabulary.
read two lines. lookup unknown words. lather. rince. repeat.

- erik

On Mon Mar 27 11:30:49 CST 2006, rog@vitanuova.com wrote:
> > I find the notion of pre-compiled headers for anything other than
> > a very special situation rather odd.
>
> it is odd.  i've just been playing with trying to get some stuff
> working under macos x, and the interfaces are just amazing.  the
> standard approach seems to be to enumerate every possible situation
> (often literally, with enums) in the interface.  a few days ago i did
> a little test, just to appreciate the full extent of things.  cpp of a
> null source file (with only the #includes i needed) gave over 100,000
> lines of code.  there were at least 20,000 enum constants defined,
> with names such as kAudioHardwarePropertyBootChimeVolumeRangeDecibels,
> and kAudioFormatProperty_AvailableEncodeChannelLayoutTags.
>
> and the interfaces that are presented are almost unusable even if you
> take that on board.  i've been looking at the audio interfaces;
> functionality provided by the system includes facilities to read mp3
> files, do sample-rate conversion, and produce sound output, so i
> thought, as a first test, i'd try to play an mp3 file.  i haven't
> succeeded yet.
>
> after struggling for a good while, i found some example code that does
> this.  it's over 1000 lines of code.  when it should be about 10.  i'd
> think perhaps it was deliberate, if it didn't all seem so carefully
> done, with loving attention given to every misbegotten line of header
> file.
>
> as charles put it recently, with relation to usb: ``enough is
> specified to make it complicated, but not enough to be complete, once
> for all.'' so true.
>
> given that kind of programming environment, the decision to use
> precompiled headers becomes slightly more understandable, i suppose.
>
> i guess the only good thing is that by using interfaces like that, they'll
> be wasting countless man-hours of programmer time, potentially
> allowing those using smaller, smarter interfaces a competitive advantage.
> yeah right.
>