Re: HPGCC Questions ladies and gentlemen!!!

Hello,

Frank Pittel wrote:

<...>


No matter how you slice it in order to compile a C program you need to know
how to compile it, and that means learning how to use the tools. Whether
that tool is a CLI or GUI is irrelevent.

In my case, it took a few hours just to get gcc running in my computer
(non-Unix) for the first time. That time included reading several
manuals to find out what environment variables to setup, etc. That's
also included in "not-so-friendly". Maybe it was just my personal
experience but I'm not exactly a rookie and it took me a decent time to
figure it out.

<...>


I'm not following you. What's hard about typing "gcc hello.c"???

Maybe it's just me but I never get what I want unless I specify several
options in the command line. Just to make a point, here is a typical
command line to compile an hpgcc program:

arm-elf-gcc -fno-inline -mtune=arm920t -mcpu=arm920t -msoft-float
-mthumb-interwork -mapcs-32 -mlittle-endian -fomit-frame-pointer -Wall
-O3 -I%_DISK:\hpgcc\include -L%_DISK:\hpgcc\lib -c %1 -o
%@path[%1]%@name[%1].o

And you still need to link it!!
Sorry, but to me it doesn't look very "friendly". I admit that this is
gcc for ARM, the PC version needs less arguments, but I always needed
something (for which you need to read a long manual). On an IDE like
MS, you just press F5 and it's done.


<...>


While I do like the syntax highlighting I get with the GNU version of vi
that I use. The rest I've found slows me down and based on what I saw
of the students that used an ide in the c++ class I took a few years ago.

How can a color slow you down? I just don't get it. Parenthesis and
bracket matching is very useful to prevent errors. Autocompletion of
class members saves you days of work going through docs trying to get
the right spelling for each member or method. Same thing for function
arguments dynamic help. It simply saves a lot of time, I don't see how
it can slow you down.


I'm convinced that learning c (or c++) by working with an ide slows down
the learning process rather that speeding it up. In the class I was in
the students used the ide as a crutch and it interfered with them learning
the language. I went through the class with my trusty vi and gcc!! :-)

Since we're talking about beginers I would rather see a beginer struggle a
bit looking for bugs in their beginer level programs with the use of printf
statements and a liberal amount of head scratching then stepping through the
code in a gui debbuger. In my never humble opinion more is learned that way
and the lessons learned tend to stay with that person longer.

In my opinion you learn just the same, except that it will be harder to
know the cause of a crash if you can't see exactly what's going on.
Your printf() statements are nothing but a very primitive data
inspector, so why not use a data inspector if it's available?

So let me see if I understand you:
* You use an editor with syntax hilighter but you claim it makes people
slower.
* You prefer to type "gcc hello.c" every time instead of pressing one
key from within the text editor (which would make it an IDE).
* You like to see the content of your variables with printf() but not
using a data inspector.

Well... no, I definitely can't understand you, which doesn't
necessarily mean you are wrong but it doesn't make much sense in my
head at this point.

Claudio

.

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