Re: Challenges using service programs, binding directories, etc.

On 8/18/2015 2:17 PM, John Yeung wrote:

This list has pretty much reached consensus on best practices for
newcomers to follow.

Has it? I know you have a pretty good idea what to recommend
newcomers, based on your own experience, but my impression is that
there are always disagreements on the approach to take.

Yes, I do believe there's consensus. What disagreements there are seem
to be stylistic rather than substantive.

Not all the disagreements fall neatly into that dichotomy either. For
example, when you describe binding directories, you make it sound very
newbie-friendly.

ILE was designed to do stupendous things. Marvellous, spectacular,
Cecil B DeMille things. I take videos of my cat with my mobile phone.
I don't need /all/ of the infrastructure of ILE, only enough to compile
*PGMs without having to remember a maze of compiler options each time.
The issue for new ILE players is that the documentation doesn't really
describe a minimal set of recommendations. Which makes ILE look like a
behemoth.

But when Alan or others talk about Make tools (and
the futility and frustration of binding directories), that certainly
sounds newbie-friendly as well.

The advice I give for program development reflects my simple needs.
There are most assuredly developers in the RPG community who need more
than I do. For those developers, a slightly more complex environment
demands slightly more complex tooling.

I don't see this as a variance from the consensus. Rather, I see this
as a realisation that one (simple) size does not and can not fit all
needs. It's not a stark, either / or sort of choice, where your
decision will lock you on a permanent path to either irredeemable doom
or everlasting glory. Virtually all of my *PGMs are built via
CRTBNDRPG, but I have a few that I maintain which I use Alan's MAKE to
recompile. Both techniques live together quite nicely.