Re: [GD-General] Eiffel

[J C L. <cl...@ka...>]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001 13:38:04 -0500 
Kent Quirk <ken...@co...> wrote:

> And just to get in my shot...to me, using emacs is like asking for
> a car and being told "here's a pickup truck full of spare parts --
> if it doesn't meet your needs, you can take it apart and rebuild
> it all by yourself!" I don't have time for that much freedom.

One of the things which regularly surprises me about other
developers is the cavalier way they treat their development tools
and environments.  Specifically: They don't invest in them.

Yes, they'll learn the tool, they'll figure out how to work
productively with it, but they won't invest in making it closer to
ideal for them with the idea that they'll then be able to carry that
value forward over time, potentially over extended periods of time.
Instead, all personal tool investment seems to be on a 3 year fixed
depreciations schedule -- after that (or sooner) you throw it away
and start over.

I don't grok this.  We blather on about reusable code, about
maintainability, and use versioning systems on our products which
often have code lifetimes (esp outside of the game arena) extending
closer to decades than 3 years, BUT we rarely ever apply those same
ideas and techniques to our own work environments.  Why?

ObNotes: 
  
  Yes, I'm an XEmacs user.  I've been incrementally building and
  adapting my .xemacs RC for almost 10 years.  Its all under source
  control and trivial to check out or update from anywhere.  It
  grows/changes rarely (couple times a year), but steadily improves.
  Its still not perfect, not by any shot, but its largely setup
  exactly the way I want and the curve is asymptotic to some
  (moving) definition of "perfect".

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
cl...@ka...               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.