Re: Open source C++ Bot

[Warrior]

Nice, you'll graduate to C# soon enough.
They all do.

[brew]

Let's say you need to parse XML.  Are you going to write an XML parsing engine each time you need to do so?  It's a fairly common need, since XML is (*gasp*) interoperable among disparate systems.  Of course you're not; you'll use a library.  Are you going to roll it just once?

You'll roll it according to the needs of your project.  But what happens when your needs change and grow, or what happens when you get another project?

You either have to adapt your XML parsing engine or rewrite it from scratch.  Both take time.

An object-oriented approach allows you to build a flexible engine.  Java and .NET both provide forward-only (XmlReader in .NET) and random-access (XmlDocument in .NET) XML reading implementations in their base class libraries.  Why should my company ever have had to waste the time in the first place to re-roll a library?  To demonstrate that I know what I'm doing?  Fuck, why don't I just write a compiler from scratch, rewrite the entire Windows API in assembly/C?  Wait, why stop there - why not rewrite the entire C library?  To hell with strcmp - I'm making myndfyre_strcmp()!

My company bills $125/hr to our clients for my time.  How can they justify the expense to our customers, who want to spend as little money as possible for as much functionality as possible?  "We want to make sure you're getting a good programmer."  Yeah, and then the client leaves.

At work I'm rated on the following: 1.) ability to make deadlines, 2.) effective estimation, 3.) ability to forward-think and plan for future changes, and 4.) producing a minimal number of defects.  That's what the client is paying for.  Apparently, my company doesn't care whether I can reimplement the Windows object manager.

brew, specifically: Where does the "competency" train end with you?  Why is the Win32 API the stopping point?  Why don't we make the "unit of code reuse" the C library?  Assembler?  Hell, why not machine code?  Assembler is just a mneumonic device.  

brew and Win32: On that note, since assembler is just a mneumonic device, why don't we just drop it entirely?  Program directly in machine code?

Seriously, nobody has answered my question: why should programming be difficult?

tl;dr
Why would anyone need to parse XML ? That sounds like something web browsers would need. Not your average application.
"To hell with strcmp - I'm making myndfyre_strcmp()!"
People do have legitimate reasons for re-implementing small, simple functions like strcmp. Just the other day, I had to make a reverse strcmp (it helped very much), but that's besides the point. Why make myndfyre_strcmp? That, and the entire .NET architecture are two very different things on very different scales. Bad comparison, if you ask me.

Fuck, why don't I just write a compiler from scratch, rewrite the entire Windows API in assembly/C?

Because we run our applications in user mode, therefore we wouldn't have the memory access like we would need to implement the windows api. I understand what you're trying to say, but isn't this example a bit too over-the-top?

brew and Win32: On that note, since assembler is just a mneumonic device, why don't we just drop it entirely?  Program directly in machine code?

That's not a bad idea, to be honest.
Why? Because, we all really should be coding in assembly, the first level of abstraction between our language and our machine's instruction set, and C should really be treated as one giant macro for assembly. For most, C speeds up development. It's great, but the layers of abstraction starts getting a little rediculous when we get to OO monsters like C#. There is little to no relation there with what happens in the processor.

[Warrior]

I think brew has reached his stupidity quota for today.
Jesus christ, that was a wall of stupid.

[Warrior]

we all really should be coding in assembly, the first level of abstraction between our language and our machine's instruction set

assembly is a language buddy, code in machine code if you're so hardcore.

I bet you and Win32 like to waste time together.

[Yegg]

For most, C speeds up development.

How do you figure?

[Dale]

Nice, you'll graduate to C# soon enough.
They all do.

If that was aimed towards me, then it's too late. I've already fallen in love with C#; It's my primary language.

[Falcon[anti-yL]]

I think brew has reached his stupidity quota for today.
Jesus christ, that was a wall of stupid.

Agreed.

[MyndFyre]

That's not a bad idea, to be honest.
Why? Because, we all really should be coding in assembly, the first level of abstraction between our language and our machine's instruction set,

See, I think you don't understand what "abstraction" really means.  Assembly isn't an "abstraction;" there's a one-to-one mapping between machine code and the mneumonic forms expressed by assembly.

I'm locking this topic because it's clear from the statement that "we should program in machine code, ideally" that you're simply trolling.