Re: [Rails-devel] Unlimited tiles option

[brett l. <wak...@gm...>]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Rick Westerman <wes...@pu...> wrote:
> brett lentz wrote:
>> It's a play option for those that want it, It defaults to being
>> disabled. The Simtex 1830 game had it.
>>
>> Other than requiring a lot of tedious XML editing, it's easy to
>> support, so I see no reason not to add it.
>>
>> ---Brett.
>>
>   The problem with tedious (and repetitive) XML is that it leads to
> tedious and much harder debugging.   One's eyes tend to glaze over when
> comparing a game's tile manifest.   As an example, when looking at tile
> #1 in order to check that the manifest correct, which is the easier XML
> to debug?

There are a few different things that make this easier.  Syntax
highlighting, etc.

One thing that has been on the to-do list is developing JUnit tests to
help automate the more mundane debugging work.


>   A rule of thumb that I use with my student programmers (and with
> myself and with my fellow professional programmers) is that whenever I
> find myself doing copy'n'paste then I should stop and ask myself, how
> can I do this better?  I.e., in a programmatic way?   I would prefer to
> see either:
>


I don't disagree.  However, I consider shipping to also be an important feature.

Not everything requires or can have an ideal technical solution.
Sometimes "good enough" is exactly what is needed.

---Brett.